# New WiFi protocol boosts congested wireless network throughput by 700%



## ekim68 (Jul 8, 2003)

> Engineers at NC State University (NCSU) have discovered a way of boosting the throughput of busy WiFi networks by up to 700%. Perhaps most importantly, the breakthrough is purely software-based, meaning it could be rolled out to existing WiFi networks relatively easily  instantly improving the throughput and latency of the network.


Here


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## Rob Pearson (Jul 10, 2003)

> "We don't have the exact details of the WiFox scheme/protocol (it's being presented at the ACM CoNEXT conference in December), but presumably it switches between normal and high priority states very rapidly. If we use the single-lane road analogy, WiFox is basically playing the role of a traffic policeman - allowing data to flow freely in one direction for a while, and then reversing the flow. Presumably the trick is designing an algorithm that is capable of detecting congestion very rapidly, and designing a traffic cop that switches priority for exactly the right amount of time to clear the backlog."


 - Quoted from this story

Very interesting. That makes me think the router basically realizes that the channel is over saturated with back/forth signals so it stops sending out a signal, grabs all the incoming signals, processes them, and then blows them all back out in a stream without dropping the the user. With the back and forth signals being more in sync between client/AP as to which way the signal is going it should allow more packets to be gathered quickly on that band. So instead of always being slow it wold be like 2 or 3 seconds of slowness and then it would be quicker until things get too convoluted (out of sync) and the router tries to re-sync the flow again... Does that make sense? Or am I missing what's going on here? Hopefully someone with more Wireless knowledge then me will weigh in on this one.


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