An Autonomic Interface Selection Mechanism for Multi-Interface Host

With the development of wireless access technology, many hosts have the ability to attach to multiple networks via Multi-InterFace(MIF). In order to communicate via multiple interfaces simultaneously and select a suitable one for each session, per-application preferences or sophisticated policy managers is implemented in some hosts, both of which are configured by users or controlled externally. Therefore, an effective and simple mechanism for interface selection in MIF host is indispensable. In this paper, we propose an Autonomic Interface Selection Mechanism (AISM) for MIF host. The AISM can select a suitable interface among several available interfaces base on the available bandwidth, radio signal strength, etc. This mechanism can monitor the network real-time bandwidth and MIF host interface state, and dynamically adjust the route policy to accommodate the variation through the interaction between the MIF host and the policy server. The result of the implementation shows that AISM can select a suitable interface for a specific destination and improve the throughput of the MIF host.