A Case for WiFi Relay: Improving VoIP Quality for WiFi Users

Voice over Internet (VoIP) has been experiencing enormous growth in recent years. While posed to replace traditional PSTN for both enterprise and residential customers, VoIP has yet to achieve the same level of quality and reliability as PSTN. One key challenge is that a growing segment of customers is increasingly relying on WiFi connections. VoIP over WiFi (VoWiFi) experiences significant degradation in quality because of packet losses, mostly due to WiFi's low capacity, varying signal strength, interference, etc. To understand this problem, the paper has developed and deployed a comprehensive measurement platform in a global enterprise network. From large-scale real-world traces, the paper quantitatively analyzes the impact of WiFi connections and study measures to mitigate such impact.