Title: Enabling DTN-based Data Offloading in Urban Mobile Network Environments

Abstract:
The explosive popularity in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs has resulted in a massive growth in the mobile network communication. Despite continued efforts to increase the physical capacity, 3G or 4G mobile networks are unlikely to provide as much bandwidth as in the wired Internet, and we expect severe overloading in the mobile network in the near future. In this paper, we present a new DTN-enabled mobile data offloading architecture in well-provisioned mobile network environments where client's delay and disruption characteristics are masked by a set of DTN-aware proxy servers, called DProx. DProx forwards the data in a store-and-forward manner and reliably relays it between mobile devices and regular servers despite network disruptions. Mobile devices communicate with DProx using a disruption-tolerant transport layer protocol from our previous work, and DProx relays the data over TCP or UDP to the servers in the wired Internet. The architecture naturally allows deadline-based large data transfer, 3G/4G traffic optimization, and even supports seamless handover between Wi-Fi and 3G without modification of the servers. We show the initial design of DProx and a number of practical scenarios that could benefit from our DTN architecture.