2017 IEEE Third International Conference on Multimedia Big Data
Mining Urban WiFi QoS Factors: A Data Driven Approach
Weihao Zhou , Zhi Wang , and Wenwu Zhu
Graduate
School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University
Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology
zwh14@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn, wangzhi@sz.tsinghua.edu.cn, wwzhu@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
AbstractWiFi networks play a signicant role in providing
todays wireless connectivity; therefore, understanding and
improving WiFi network performance is important for todays
mobile applications and services. Previous studies conducted
to investigate WiFi network performance have generally been
performed using specic types of WiFi networks in relatively
small areas and have been limited by either the scale of
the studied WiFi access points (APs) or by the number of
users. This paper describes a country-wide measurement study
on WiFi network performance with the goal of determining
which factors affect the quality of service (QoS) of high-
density WiFi networks. We use a crowdsourced approach to
study both the latency and bandwidth experienced by users in
different types of WiFi networks. Our ndings indicate that
(1) WiFi network performance is correlated not only with
signal strength but also with factors such as time; (2) the
latency and bandwidth experienced by users generally exhibit
different patterns and are affected differently by the studied
factors; and (3) users experience signicantly different QoS
from different nearby APs, which suggests that providing users
with better information when choosing a WiFi connection can
yield more satisfactory results. We also provide insights on how
such ndings can be utilized to improve AP deployments and
optimize association strategies.
Keywords-WiFi; QoS; Data Mining; Latency; Bandwidth
I. I NTRODUCTION
Smart mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets,
have become increasingly popular among users. These de-
vices allow users to enjoy the mobile Internet more often
than before. WiFi networks have become one of the most
popular choices for users to surf the Internet [1] while on the
move. Currently, WiFi networks can be found everywhere,
from retail stores to hotels, and are used to deliver large
amounts of multimedia trafc such as video/audio streaming,
online gaming, and so forth. These uses indicate that WiFi
networks play a signicant role in providing todays wire-
less connectivity. When many WiFi networks are available
in a city, studying network performance and determining
which factors affect the WiFi quality of service (QoS) are
important problems. Solving these problems will provide us
with opportunities to better understand and improve network
performance and to recommend better WiFi choices for users
so they can achieve better QoS.
In previous studies, network performance measurements
and the determination of which factors inuence WiFi
QoS have generally been performed using specic types
978-1-5090-6549-3/17 $31.00 2017 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/BigMM.2017.12
of WiFi networks in relatively small areas. Chen et al. [2]
measured the network performance of a university cam-
pus WiFi network and identied the dominant factors that
affect network performance. Divgi et al. [3] focused on
commercial WiFi networks in Australia and presented some
user activity characteristics. Ghosh et al. [4] studied user
behaviors when they were associated with public hotspots
using AT&T public datasets. Patro et al. [5] measured the
user experience using OpenWrt-based access points. Farshad
et al. [6] measured the density of access points and inter-
ferences among neighboring access points in the city. Some
other large-scale studies have been performed, but, in these
studies, the WiFi networks were typically controllable and
operational. Biswas et al. [7] monitored large-scale wireless
links using customized access points that were controllable
with dedicated radio hardware (e.g., Meraki MR18). Sui
et al. [8] deployed the lightweight WiFiSeer framework
into large-scale operational WiFi networks on a campus to
characterize and improve WiFi latency.
1
0.8
0.6 Beijing
CDF
Shenzhen
0.4 Shanghai
Guangzhou
0.2
0
1 5 10 20 50 100 300
Nbunber of Hotspots in Each Cell
Figure 1. The Density of WiFi Networks in Four Cities in China. Using
collected WiFi datasets, we divide the areas of these four cities into 100
x 100-meter cells and count the number of WiFi hotspots in each cell to
calculate the density and draw the cumulative distribution function (CDF)
curves. Nearly 50 percent of the cells in each city have more than 5 WiFi
hotspots, indicating that the density of WiFi networks in cities is high.
However, compared with previous studies, studying net-
work performance and mining the factors that affect WiFi
QoS on a large scale in cities remain challenging. There
are multiple reasons for this challenge. First, collecting
large-scale WiFi datasets in metropolitan areas is difcult
because i) WiFi networks are composed of many different
types of WiFi networks, including private, public, residen-
9
tial and business networks; ii) WiFi networks constructed
by different individuals/organizations for different purposes
are not controllable or even always operational; and iii)
modifying AP hardware or deploying a specic framework
such as WiFiSeer [8] into APs on a large scale is very
expensive. Second, because WiFi networks are used not
only by users but also by devices such as Roku and
SlingTV, computers running automated processes, sensors
and other IoT-connected devices, etc. Such attached devices
can easily consume sufcient bandwidth to affect WiFi
network performance for human users. Therefore, this
mining study requires large numbers of users and devices
to contribute to the measurement effort.
To overcome these challenges, we develop a crowd-
sourced approach to collect WiFi datasets and use machine
learning methods (i.e., decision tree) to study both the
latency and bandwidth experienced by users in cities. The
crowdsourced approach, which is explained in detail in
Section II, provides us with the opportunity to collect WiFi
datasets easily in the city. The machine learning methods
(explained in Section III) allow us to mine the factors that
affect urban WiFi QoS.
In total, the WiFi datasets listed in Table I contain data
for 10,932,982 unique users, 17,489,226 unique hotspots
and 49,854,136 sessions collected over 30 days in 2015,
which enable a panoramic view of city WiFi networks on a
large scale. To study the factors that inuence high-density
WiFi QoS in cities, we rst select 6 core factors from the
WiFi datasets: signal strength, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR),
Internet service provider (ISP), number of connections,
ping speed, and time (Table III). Then, we use statistical
approaches and feature selection methods to estimate the in-
uences by calculating the correlations between each factor
and QoS metrics such as latency and bandwidth. The sta-
tistical approaches include Pearson correlation coefcients
and Kendall rank correlation coefcients. Feature selection
methods such as information gain and information gain ratio
are used to mine the data.
Using these WiFi datasets and mining methods, we nd
that (1) signal strength does not have a strong inuence
on the WiFi network performance. In contrast, time, SNR
and ping speed factors are more strongly correlated; (2)
the latency and bandwidth experienced by different users
on the same WiFi are not correlated, indicating that good
latency/bandwidth enjoyed by users is to some extent, expe-
rienced randomly from the same access point; and (3) users
experience signicantly different QoS from different nearby
access points, indicating that WiFi selection is critical.
Based on our measurements and data mining results,
choosing the access point with the highest signal strength
among multiple nearby access points does not always guar-
antee the best QoS. Moreover, the factors that affect WiFi
selection also vary depending on different demands, such as
low latency or high bandwidth. When users need low latency,
10
they should place more emphasis on the ping speed factor
and when they need high bandwidth, they should emphasize
the time factor. Furthermore, we also provide insights on
how such ndings can be utilized to improve access point
deployments and optimize association strategies.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Sec-
tion II, we provide details about the architecture of the
crowdsourced WiFi association system and the preprocess-
ing of the WiFi datasets. The WiFi data mining framework is
presented in Section III. The mining experiments of latency
and bandwidth are discussed in Section IV. We show related
works in Section V and draw conclusions in Section VI.
II. W I F I DATASETS
In this section, we will introduce and then comprehen-
sively discuss the WiFi datasets collected by the crowd-
sourced WiFi network association system. The crowdsourced
approach makes it easy to collect datasets from WiFi net-
works that are not controllable or always operational in the
city. The large scales of these WiFi datasets are helpful in
overcoming the limitations of WiFi mining.
A. System Architecture
Coordinative association scheduler
Association
scheduler
WiFi network resource
Proactive QoS User behaviour QoS and behaviours report
monitor monitor
QoS testing
Security hotspot lter User
Testing
servers
Edge
Crowdsourced WiFi
network resource pool
network
Figure 2. The architecture of the coordinative WiFi association system:
crowdsourced WiFi network information is maintained, and WiFi hotspots
are suggested to users based on centralized information.
In this subsection, we illustrate the architecture of the
crowdsourced WiFi network monitor system and the data
report mechanism. Figure 2 shows the architecture of the
coordinated WiFi association system, which consists of four
interactive components. As the key role in the crowdsourced-
based system, users mobile devices sense the edge network
environment, record the WiFi session processes and QoS
metrics and report this measured information to a crowd-
sourced WiFi network resource pool in the central server.
Testing servers used to assist in QoS testing consist of some
dedicated content delivery network (CDN) servers, through
which most multimedia services are currently delivered. The
central server uses information maintained in the resource
pool to help us understand network performance and guide
hotspot associations.
 To deploy this crowdsourced WiFi association system, we Table II
W I F I COVERAGE IN REPRESENTATIVE CITIES IN C HINA
collaborate with our industrial partner, the Tencent WiFi THE SIZE OF EACH CITY IS UPDATED IN 2015.
team, which runs a popular APP installed on smart mobile
devices. By combining the crowdsourced approach with
City WiFi covered area (km2 ) Coverage fraction
this APP, we can collect users hotspot associations and
Beijing 1357.47 0.083
WiFi network environment whenever the APP is activated Guangzhou 950.04 0.128
by users. Note that users have allowed the actions of this Shanghai 1396.40 0.220
APP and that we strictly protect user privacy. Specically, Shenzhen 535.19 0.274
the APP measures the following information: (1) latency,
such as connection time cost, is the time cost of sending
an association request to the response received and (2) speed) are used separately in latency mining and bandwidth
bandwidth, including both download and upload speeds, is mining because some (i.e., number of connections and ping
measured by downloading/uploading a 5 Mb le from/to the speed) are recorded in the latency dataset and the others are
testing CDN servers. recorded in the bandwidth dataset.
B. WiFi Datasets Table III
T HE FACTORS OF W I F I DATASETS FOR M INING
1) The Whole Datasets: The WiFi datasets were collected
from 4 representative cities (i.e., Beijing, Shanghai, Shen- ID Factors Value Ranges Used
zhen and Guangzhou) in China and are composed of two 1 Signal Strength 0,1,2,3,4 L B
parts: latency data and bandwidth data, as shown in Table I. 2 Signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR) 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 B
The latency data records are from Nov. 27 to Dec. 10, 2015, 3 Internet Service Provider (ISP) 8 classes* B
4 Number of Connections 0 255 L
and the bandwidth data records are from Nov. 27 to Dec. 5 Ping Speed 0ms L
27. These WiFi datasets have as many as ten million records 6 Time 24 Hours L B
in each class (i.e., users and hotspots), making it possible to * Includes 46000,46001,46002,46003,46007,46011,20404,45412.
study the factors that inuence WiFi QoS on a large scale.
This information also indirectly indicates that WiFi network 4) QoS: To study the factors that inuence WiFi network
density in Chinese cities is high. QoS, we choose 2 classic metrics, latency and bandwidth,
to measure the WiFi network QoS. To measure latency, we
Table I
T HE I NTRODUCTION OF W I F I DATASETS select the latency factor, which includes the time cost of
pinging from users smart mobile devices to CDN servers.
Items Users Hotspots Sessions Days For bandwidth, download and upload speeds are chosen,
Latency 6,812,933 12,812,420 38,444,958 14 which provide information about the transmission speed
Bandwidth 4,119,049 4,676,806 11,409,178 30 from users smart mobile devices to CDN servers.
Total 10,931,982 17,489,226 49,854,136 30*
* All days range from Nov. 27 to Dec. 27, 2015. C. Preprocessing
However, continuous values are not appropriate for data
2) WiFi Coverage: We investigate how representative mining algorithms such as decision tree. Therefore, we rst
cities are covered by WiFi networks. Based on the locations discretize the value ranges of the latency and download
of the WiFi hotspots, we calculate the area in these cities speed. As illustrated in Figure 6(a), we nd that upload
covered by WiFi networks. We assume that a WiFi hotspot speed and download speed have nearly the same distribution;
can cover a circular area with a radius of 30 meters. Table II thus, we choose download speed as a representative case.
lists the WiFi-covered areas in different cities, in both km2
(i.e., the size of the area that is covered by WiFi networks) Table IV
and percentage (i.e., the percentage of WiFi-covered area D ISCRETIZATIONS OF L ATENCY AND BANDWIDTH
compared to the entire city area). This observation suggests ID Classes Latency Bandwidth
that cities with higher population densities usually have 0 Ex Fast/Low 50ms (16.7%) 40Kbps (8.3%)
higher rates of WiFi availability. 1 Fast/Low 50 130 ms (24.9%) 40 500 Kbps (32.7%)
2 Slow/High 130 300 ms (28.3%) 0.5 1.6 Mbps (36.6%)
3) Factors: By analyzing the WiFi datasets, we select 6 3 Ex Slow/High 300ms (30.1%) 1.6Mbps (22.4%)
core factors from the data items to mine the inuences: sig-
nal strength, SNR, ISP, number of connections, ping speed,
To perform discretization, we draw the CDF curves of
and time (Table III). In Table III, the Used column indicates
latency and download speed as shown in Figure 3. Com-
whether these factors are used in latency or bandwidth; an
paring the equal frequency discretization and equal width
L indicates latency and a B indicates bandwidth. These
discretization, we decide to discretize these value ranges
four factors (i.e., SNR, ISP, number of connections and ping
based on real-life demands. As shown in Table IV, the

11
value ranges for latency and download speed are both Table V
M AINSTREAM M ULTI -C LASSIFICATION M ETHOD ACCURACIES
split into four classes. For latency, we adopt a threshold
value of 50 ms to represent extremely fast performance Methods Latency Bandwidth
(Ex Fast); this performance level allows users to surf the Decision Tree 0.39658362 0.431763571
Internet more satisfactorily. For download speed, we nd that Extra Trees 0.31634051 0.438247991
approximately 22.4 percent of bandwidth records exceed 1.6 AdaBoost 0.39581812 0.432840988
Random Forest 0.39617334 0.432116284
Mbps; this speed allows les to be downloaded easily and is LDA 0.39602068 0.425746223
represented by Ex High. Using this discretization approach, KNN 0.29447991 0.338264691
network performance can be suitably characterized.

1 1
We must be careful when choosing machine learning al-
0.8
0.8
gorithms to mine the rules: the selected algorithms should
0.6 0.6 be able to not only tackle the complex relationships and
CDF
CDF

Ex Fast Fast Slow Ex Slow Ex Low Low High Ex High

0.4 0.4
0.2 0.2
0 0
10 50 130 300 1000
Latency (ms)
(a) Latency Distribution
Figure 3. From these distribution curves, we divide the value ranges
into four classes: Ex Slow/Slow/Fast/Ex Fast for latency and Ex
Low/Low/High/Ex High for download speed based on real-life consider-
ations rather than equal-frequency discretization or equal-width discretiza-
tion. (Note: Ex denotes Extremely.)
III. W I F I DATA M INING F RAMEWORK
This section provides a comprehensive introduction to the
WiFi data mining framework, which includes three parts:
mining methods, inuential factors and WiFi QoS metrics.
A. Mining Methods
The mining targets consist of two parts: (1) calculating
the correlations and (2) mining the rules to instruct users
how to select better WiFi to achieve a better QoS.
The statistical approaches used include Pearson correla-
tion coefcients (PCC) and Kendall rank correlation coef-
cients (KRCC) and feature selection methods consist of
information gain (IG) and information gain ratio (IGR).
The PCC and KRCC are generally used to study the
linear correlations between each factor and QoS metrics such
as latency and bandwidth. Linear correlations are easy to
understand and provide a direct view of the inuences. How-
ever, correlations are often non-linear, and these statistical
approaches are not able to reveal inuences from non-linear
correlations. Instead, we use IG/IGR methods to reveal the
non-linear correlations. The IG indicates a change in the
amount of system information. The larger the IG value is, the
more important a factor is for the entire system. Although IG
is good for studying non-linear correlations, to some extent,
the IGR is even better because it also indicates the speed of
the change in system information.
To research the rules, we focus on the circumstances that
lead to bandwidth and latency that are Ex Slow or Ex High.
These targets indicate that it is a classication problem.
interdependencies but also explain the ndings simply and
clearly. We conducted some pilot experiments using 10-fold
cross-validation on mainstream multi-classication machine
10 4 10 5 10 6 10 7 10 8
Download Speed (bps)
learning algorithms, including decision tree, random forests,
(b) Bandwidth Distribution
extra trees, AdaBoost, linear discriminant analysis (LDA)
and k-nearest neighbor (KNN). From the accuracies shown
in Table V, we nd that the decision tree algorithm has the
best accuracy in the latency experiment and the fourth best
in the bandwidth experiment. By comprehensively consid-
ering the accuracy and simplicity of these machine learning
algorithms, we decide to use the decision tree algorithm to
study the rules based on these selected factors.
B. Inuential Factors
Based on Tencent WiFi datasets, we select six core factors
to mine inuences on WiFi QoS.
Signal Strength. The most obvious factor in WiFi
networks is the signal strength. In the WiFi datasets,
the signal strength value range has ve levels, 0, 1, 2,
3, and 4. A larger value indicates a stronger signal;
however, whether a stronger signal affects the QoS of
WiFi networks is worth researching.
SNR. SNR removes noise that cause interference, leav-
ing the pure signal.
ISP. WiFi networks are constructed by ISPs, and dif-
ferent ISPs offer different services. We need to study
how much inuence ISPs have on WiFi QoS.
Number of Connections. Each individual access point
may serve as the connection point for many different
smart mobile devices. Smart mobile devices connecting
to the same access point may compete for network
resources. Mining the inuence that this factor has on
WiFi QoS is necessary.
Ping Speed. This factor is the speed with which users
smart mobile devices can ping CDN servers. The con-
nection time cost equals the length of the network path
from users smart mobile devices to the CDN server
divided by the ping speed.
Time. Time factor indicates 24 hours in an entire day.

12
 3.5 0.25 10-3 0.3
6
Time

Information Gain Ratio

3 5 0.25

Kendall Coefficient
Pearson Coefficient
0.2 Signal Strength
Information Gain

Time 4 Ping Speed 0.2 Time

2.5 Time Signal Strength 3 Number of Connections 0.15 Signal Strength
2 Signal Strength 0.15 Ping Speed Ping Speed
Ping Speed 2
Number of Connections 0.1 Number of Connections
1.5 Number of Connections 0.1 1
0.05
0
1 0
0.05 -1
0.5 -2 -0.05
0 0 -3 -0.1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Date(Nov.27 -- Dec.10 in 2015) Date(Nov.27 -- Dec.10 in 2015) Date(Nov.27 -- Dec.10 in 2015) Date(Nov.27 -- Dec.10 in 2015)

(a) Information Gain of Latency (b) Ratio of Information Gain for Latency (c) Pearson Coefcient of Latency (d) Kendall Coefcient of Latency
4.5 0.45 0.07 0.35
4 Information Gain Ratio 0.4 0.06 Time 0.3
ISP

Pearson Coefficient

Kendall Coefficient
Time Time 0.05
Information Gain

3.5 0.35 SNR 0.25

ISP ISP 0.04 Time
3 0.3 SNR 0.03 Signal Strength 0.2
SNR ISP
2.5 Signal Strength 0.25 Signal Strength 0.02 0.15 SNR
2 0.2 0.01 0.1 Signal Strength
1.5 0.15 0 0.05
-0.01
1 0.1 -0.02 0
0.5 0.05 -0.03 -0.05
0 0 -0.04 -0.1
5 10 15 20 25 30 5 10 15 20 25 30 5 10 15 20 25 30 5 10 15 20 25 30
Date(Nov.27 -- Dec.27 in 2015) Date(Nov.27 -- Dec.27 in 2015) Date(Nov.27 -- Dec.27 in 2015) Date(Nov.27 -- Dec.27 in 2015)

(e) Information Gain of Bandwidth (f) Ratio of Information Gain for Bandwidth (g) Pearson Coefcient of Bandwidth (h) Kendall Coefcient of Bandwidth
Figure 4. The inuences of six core factors on WiFi latency and bandwidth. We use statistical approaches and feature selection methods to calculate
these inuences. Figures (a), (b), (c), and (d) show the latency results, while (e), (f), (g), and (h) show the bandwidth results. The X-axis in all the images
represents the date.

C. Metrics of WiFi QoS nearly insignicant. As we all know, the time cost equals the
In this part, we present two traditional metrics, latency length of the path divided by the speed. When the number
and bandwidth, to measure WiFi QoS. of network hops from users smart mobile devices that are
1) Latency: WiFi latency [8] is a critical performance connected to the same access point to the same CDN server
measure for modern real-time interactive mobile Internet are the nearly same, latency is highly correlated with the
applications, including online games, instant messaging and ping speed.
live collaborative applications. In Table III, we research how From Figure 4(c) and Figure 4(d), we observe that the
much inuence four factors, namely, signal strength, number Pearson and Kendall correlations between the four factors
of connections, ping speed and time, have on WiFi latency. and latency are relatively small. As Figure 4(c) shows,
2) Bandwidth: Bandwidth is another core metric for the Pearson correlations are very small, below 0.01, which
measuring WiFi QoS. For users streaming video or audio indicates almost no correlation, while Figure 4(d) shows
streamingactivities that consume large amounts of data that the Kendall correlations are also small. The Kendall
bandwidth is more important than latency. In this paper, we correlations between latency and signal strength on some
select two metrics (download speed and upload speed) to days are greater than 0.25but overall, these values do not
represent bandwidth. indicate a strong positive correlation.
From the above analyses, the latency mining can be
IV. W I F I DATA M INING E XPERIMENTS summarized as follows: the PCC and KRCC tests show that
In this section, we use IG/IGR feature selection methods, these factors do not have obvious linear correlations with
PCC/KRCC statistical approaches and decision tree to per- WiFi latency, whereas the IG/IGR research results indicate
form mining experiments to investigate the effects of the that ping speed has a greater inuence on WiFi latency than
selected factors on latency and bandwidth and show results. the other three factors.

A. Latency B. Bandwidth
With the latency dataset, this subsection presents studies Bandwidth is another core metric for measuring WiFi
on the inuences of four factors on WiFi latency. As illus- QoS. As illustrated in Figure 4(e) and Figure 4(f), the study
trated in Figure 4(a) and Figure 4(b), in both measurements, results show that the four factors inuence bandwidth in
the four factors inuence latency in the following order of the following order: time > SNR > signal strength > ISP.
importance: ping speed > signal strength, time > number of Time has the highest correlation with bandwidth because
connections. Ping speed has the largest degree of inuence the same access point provides only a certain amount of
on latency, providing good evidence for the assertion above. total bandwidth, and people use WiFi networks regardless of
The degrees of inuence of signal strength and time are their current behavior (e.g., working, shopping or resting).
nearly the same, whereas the number of connections is The reason why the SNR factor has more inuence than

13
the signal strength factor is that the SNR is the signal
strength without the noise that cause bandwidth losses.
Although WiFi networks are constructed by different ISPs,
the ISP factor has little inuence on bandwidth because the
total bandwidth offered by the ISP is far greater than the
bandwidth available through a WiFi access pointin other
words, the bottleneck is the AP, not the ISP. However, the
total trafc on a given ISP trunk line might explain the slight
inuence that ISP has in this study.
In Figure 4(g), the mining result from the PCC statistical
approach shows that the Pearson correlation values are very
small, indicating that the four factors have no obvious linear
correlations with WiFi bandwidth. In Figure 4(h), the KRCC
results show that the correlation of bandwidth with signal
strength is nearly 0.3, which is larger than the correlation of
the other factors, indicating that signal strength has a slight
linear correlation with WiFi bandwidth.
In summary, the bandwidth mining results from PCC
show that these factors have no linear correlations with
bandwidth, while the KRCC results show that signal strength
has a small correlation with bandwidth. The IG/IGR research
results indicate that time has the largest inuence on WiFi
bandwidth while SNR has the second largest, and both have
more inuence than the other factors.
C. Signal Strength
We use the signal strength reported by the users through
the WiFi connection session traces and associate it with the
reported QoS, which includes users perceptions of latency
and download speed. To study the correlation between signal
strength and the QoS metrics, we plot the CDFs of the
average latencies experienced by users at different signal
strength levels in Figure 5(a) and the CDFs of the average
download speeds experienced by users at different signal
strength levels in Figure 5(b). The impact of signal strength
on bandwidth is obvious (i.e., a higher signal level leads to
a larger bandwidth speed), indicating that the bottleneck is
usually the last hopthe wireless hop. Thus, it is important
to improve the deployment of WiFi networks to reduce
interference. In contrast, the impact of signal strength on
the latency experienced by users is less obvious. Compared
with download speed, the latency caused in a network has
a signicant impact on QoS [9].
1 1
signal-level=0
signal-level=0
0.8 signal-level=1
signal-level=2
0.8
signal-level=1
signal-level=2
0.6
signal-level=3
signal-level=4 0.6
signal-level=3
signal-level=4
CDF
CDF
0.4 0.4
0.2
0.2
0
1 10 30 50 100 300500 1000
0
100
Latency (ms)
(a) The Inuence on Latency (b) The Inuence on Bandwidth
Figure 5. The Inuence of Signal Strength on Latency and Bandwidth.
D. Combining Latency with Bandwidth
The factors shown in Table III could be used in both
latency and bandwidth studies by using the same unique
BSSID of the same hotspot to combine the WiFi datasets.
Based on this idea, we research the correlation between
latency and bandwidth at the same access point and ob-
tain the results shown in Figure 6(b). As shown in Fig-
ure 6(b), the latency and bandwidth of the same hotspot are
nearly independentin other words, users enjoying good
latency/bandwidth are doing so randomly to some extent.
1 10 6
2.2 400
0.8
Download Speed
Upload Speed
download speed (bps)
ping latency (ms)
Download Speed (bps)
Ping Latency (ms)
2
0.6 300
CDF
0.4 1.8
200
0.2
1.6
0 100
100 103 104 105 106 107 108 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Download/Upload Speeds (bps) # of AP
(a) Distribution Of WiFi bandwidth (b) Correlation between Latency and Bandwidth
Figure 6. Mining the correlation between latency and bandwidth combined:
(a) the distribution of WiFi download speed and upload speed are nearly
the same; therefore, we choose download speed to represent bandwidth. We
use the same unique BSSID to select the top 72 APs that appear in both
in the latency and bandwidth datasets to draw the curves in Figure (b).
E. Decision Tree Method
As shown in Table V, we chose the decision tree method
(Figure 7) to model the effects of six factors on WiFi QoS.
In Figure 7(a), the decision tree method achieves an
accuracy of 0.4318 in classifying the bandwidth based on
four factors. We know that signal strength has an obvious
impact on bandwidth. However, from Figure 7(a), we can see
the impact of other factors as well: (1) The smaller the signal
strength is, the lower the bandwidth is, as shown in the left-
bottom and right-bottom branches; (2) Time is associated
with user behavior. Here, the value 63 means 21:00 hours.
As the gure shows, the time mainly affects the bandwidth
around the time before 21:00 and after 21:00 (i.e., after
21:00 hours, a signal strength of <= 3.5 results in Low
bandwidth, otherwise it results in High bandwidth); (3) As
indicated in the footnote for Table III, the 2 ISP indicates
the 46002 class. ISP 3 offered Ex High bandwidth
when the signal strength was > 2.5 and before approximately
21:00; and (4) The SNR factor provides a chance to diagnose
the Ex Low and Low classes shown in the right-bottom
branches. The ways in which these factors affect bandwidth
are comprehensive and we should take all these factors into
consideration when diagnosing the bandwidth.
In Figure 7(b), the decision tree approach achieves an
101 102 103 104 105 accuracy of 0.3966. By analyzing Figure 7(b), we can nd
Download Speed (Kbps)
the following. (1) Ping speed is the deciding factor in many
branches, indicating that it is important for latency. (2)
In most cases, when the ping speed is large, the latency
14
 Signal
Strength Signal


 
 Strength
Signal 




ISP
Strength Ping

 Ping


 
 

 Speed Speed
High Time ISP Time

  
  
 

 



 
 

 


 Number of Ping Ping
Fast
Ex Low ISP
Signal Connections Speed Speed
SNR SNR Strength

 
 
 












 
 

 
 

 

 


Ex Low Low Ex Low Low High Ex High Low High Ex Fast Ex Slow Slow Ex Slow Ex Fast Slow

(a) Bandwidth (b) Latency

Figure 7. Decision tree results from modeling the effects of six factors on WiFi QoS. The colored nodes indicate classications. Figure(a) shows factors
time, SNR, ISP, Signal Strength inuencing on bandwidth. Figure(b) shows factors Ping Speed, Signal Strength, Number of Connections affecting on latency.

is Slow or Ex Slow. (3) However, in the right-bottom WiFi networks that are in range but belong to others would
branch, when the ping speed <= 1271.5ms (the prerequisite provide Internet access to mobile users. Soroush et al. [12]
is that signal strength must be > 2.5 and the ping speed studied how mobile users utilize dense deployments of WiFi
> 168.5ms), the latency is classied into the Ex Fast class. APs for concurrent WiFi connections. In particular, the
(4) Finally, in the left-bottom branch, the factor number practical issues of access-point discovery and DHCP lease
of connections has an important role in determining the acquisition using a single wireless channel were investigated
latency class, i.e., when the number of connections is <= 29, through a prototype. The access point association decision
the latency belongs to the Ex Fast class; otherwise it is generally made by the client locally and selshly. This
belongs to Ex Slow class. These results indicate that smart behavior has been analyzed through game theory in different
mobile devices connecting to the same access point will network settings [13]. Biswas et al. [14] studied wireless
compete for bandwidth resources. From the above ndings, network behaviors using traces collected from a cloud-based
we know that the inuences of various factors are quite network management system.
complex; the same factor will contribute to different results
B. WiFi Network Performance and Improvement
under different conditions.
Based on these study results, we provide some sugges- Some efforts have been devoted to WiFi network perfor-
tions to improve AP deployments and optimize association mance. Gupta et al. [15] studied the factors responsible for
strategies in summary. When selecting a WiFi network to the poor performance of dense WiFi networks and found that
achieve high bandwidth, we recommend considering the trafc asymmetry is a major factor in performance degrada-
time and SNR factor more. The inuence of SNR on WiFi tion in such environments. The limited number of orthogonal
QoS is larger than the inuence of the signal strength. This channels in 802.11 wireless networks result in overlapped
knowledge provides opportunities to improve access point channels among multiple access points, a situation known
deployment to decrease interference among high-density as co-channel access points [16] [17]. These access points
WiFi networks in cities.When selecting a WiFi network to inevitably suffer from higher interference, higher collisions
achieve low latency, we recommend connecting to the WiFi and, consequently, sub-optimal throughput. Sundaresan et
network that has the highest real-time ping speed and the al. [18] observed that Internet access links can signicantly
smallest number of connections to achieve better QoS. affect the performance users achieve because different ISPs
use different policies and trafc-shaping strategies and there
V. R ELATED W ORKS is no best ISP for all users.
A. Usage and Measurement of WiFi Networks C. AP selection
802.11 based WiFi networks have emerged as an at- There are many approaches to AP selection. Currently,
tractive solution that can provide network connectivity in most devices only utilize a subset of the available in-
places where individuals spend considerable amounts of formation to make choices based on simple assumptions
time. Several studies have investigated WiFi network usage. concerning wireless performance. The traditional preference
Afanasyev et al. [10] investigated the role that city-wide is to connect to access points with stronger RSSIand this is
WiFi deployments play in the increasingly diverse access a common approach [19]but stronger signal strength does
network spectrum and observed that a diverse set of mobility not ensure better performance [20]. Some implementations
patterns map well to the archetypal use cases for tradi- utilize historical or actively measured client-side information
tional access technologies. Efstathiou et al. [11] proposed in addition to RSSI [21]. However, it is time-consuming and
a decentralized approach for WiFi sharing, in which private bothersome for each user device to test each nearby AP.

15
 VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we focus on mining the factors that inuence
the QoS of urban high-density WiFi networks. We create a
crowdsourced approach that is combined with a popular APP
installed on smart mobile devices to collect WiFi datasets
easily in four representative cities in China. The large
scales of these WiFi datasets are helpful in overcoming the
limitations of WiFi mining. To the best of our knowledge, we
are the rst to conduct a country-level measurement study
on WiFi network performance and investigate which factors
affect the urban high-density WiFi latency and bandwidth.
First, to understand the WiFi network performance, we select
six core factors that determine the QoS metrics and use
feature selection methods and statistical approaches to study
the correlations. Second, we choose decision tree method to
model the rules based on these factors to instruct to improve
AP deployments and optimize association strategies. Finally,
for users who need to achieve low latency and high band-
width simultaneously, our mining results show that these
two targets cannot be simultaneously guaranteed; however,
we will study this problem more deeply in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to thank our industrial partnerthe Ten-
cent WiFi teamfor providing the WiFi datasets. This work
is supported in part by funding from the Tsinghua-Tencent
Joint Laboratory for Internet Innovation Technology.
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