Dynamic Experience Management (DEM) is a Wireless LAN Gateway (WLAN GW) capability that monitors user plane traffic to build a network-wide view of congestion on the subscriber, application, and access point radio levels. DEM enables making real-time decisions and dynamic actions, such as rate limiting or blocking of specific applications. It provides a managed, optimal user experience within the actual, overall network capabilities.
In situations of high network load and congestion, application Quality of Experience (QoE) degrades because of restricted resources across the network (for example, in radio or transport). In this context, operators cannot differentiate background traffic from real-time traffic efficiently and dynamically. This differentiation is especially important for delay-sensitive applications such as video.
In Radio Access Networks (RAN), the network congestion points are typically located in the access point WiFi radio. See Figure: WiFi network congestion at AP radio.
Increased penetration of WiFi-enabled devices (for example, mobile handsets, tablets, laptops, and TVs) and widespread use of streaming video results in frequent data plane congestion events in WiFi networks. This congestion results in service degradation for WiFi subscribers attached to congested access points and creates challenges in implementing fair usage policies to manage network congestion in the access network.
DEM provides the capability of managing WiFi access congestion points at the WLGW to provide some level of QoS guarantees to different applications, which otherwise poses challenges as the loading of the different access points at any point in time is different, both in quantity (Bandwidth) and application types (for example, video, web, or mail).