Deploying Ubiquitous Connectivity with Commodity Wireless Routers

Commodity wireless routers have become widely deployed, providing a new opportunity to provide inexpensive Internet connectivity in broad areas. We present a software architecture to promote sharing connectivity, using easily upgraded wireless routers and unmodified client devices. We focus primarily on aspects of security and resource allocation, addressing several issues specific to our domain, including appropriate authentication and router queuing mechanisms. We evaluate our queuing mechanisms on an experimental wireless testbed to show improved fairness and utilization compared to alternatives. Overall, our design is appropriate for both small and large deployments of upgraded wireless routers, supporting widespread growth of wireless connectivity.