Flow scheduling at multihomed devices during vertical handover in NGN

Mobile Nodes (MNs) are nowadays equiped with several network interfaces. Multihomed equipment can benefit from the network diversity to increase end-user satisfaction. In NGN based technologies, such as IMS, vertical handover still suffers from roaming from different access technologies and session continuity between heterogeneous network interfaces is still under study. Vertical mobility using End-User context information and SIP signaling is foreseen to efficiently comply to 3GPP standards and provide enhanced end-user satisfaction. QoE estimation are usually derived from media QoS information. This paper focuses mainly on media switching while performing a vertical handover. A new algorithm handling incoming media from different network interfaces is introduced. A proof-of-concept involving WLAN to 3G mobility validates our analysis and provides interesting results.