John R. Lange, J. Scott Miller, and Peter A. Dinda
EmNet: Satisfying The Individual User
Through Empathic Home Networks
Our work targets resource allocation in home networks. As opposed to previous work
that optimized performance for the canonical user, we propose focusing on the needs
the individual user. By utilizing direct satisfaction feedback from the end-user, our
system, EmNet, is able to increase user satisfaction across a wide-variety of network
applications while preventing starvation for background applications.
Variation in User Satisfaction
Current techniques of home
network partitioning ignore
the experience of the end-user
Department of EECS, Northwestern University
{jarusl, jeffrey-miller, pdinda}@northwestern.edu
http://empathicsystems.org
EmNet: The User Satisfying Home Router
EmNet Architecture
• Designed for home broadband routers
• Consists of four parts:
• Overlaid user satisfaction scale
• Real time satisfaction feedback
• Proxy server to inject sensor
• Network policy controller
• Per user satisfaction data
• WFQ based provisioning mechanism
User drives queuing decisions
EmNet-enabled broadband router
Large variation in tolerance of
identical network disruptions
Network provisioning using user satisfaction
• Evaluated by a user study
• 20 participants
• 16 network conditions
• Variance across all scenarios
• Allocate bandwidth based on user satisfaction
• User satisfaction translates to router WFQ policy
• Prevents background traffic starvation
• Static provisioning plus unused bandwidth
Example: Boxplots showing 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile
user satisfaction ratings for a streaming video application
User Study Evaluation of EmNet
Home network optimizations ignoring this variation are SUBOPTIMAL
• Some interactive users will be dissatisfied, others are over-provisioned
• Home broadband networks present a unique opportunity for improvement
Design of User Studies and Testbed
Evaluation on an emulated home network
• 20 users in each study
• 3 Applications
• Wikipedia
• Streaming video
• Image Labeler
• Multiple cross-traffic scenarios
• 16 in variation study
• 14 in EmNet evaluation
• 7 with user control
• 7 with placebo control
• Per-scenario
satisfaction ratings
• Prompted for
satisfaction on 10
point scale
Wikipedia
Image Labeling Game
Streaming video
Test Subject
Internet
Web Proxy
Average user satisfaction per-application using EmNet, static WFQ and standard FIFO
• EmNet and WFQ benefit Wikipedia and Image Labeler by bounding latency
• EmNet provides greater average satisfaction over static WFQ
• Users are able to successfully provision their use of the network
Network Bridge
(Home Router)
Cross Traffic Client
Cross Traffic Server
• EmNet improves user satisfaction 24% over standard FIFO provisioning
• Large satisfaction improvement with small bandwidth cost
User-directed network provisioning IMPROVES overall user satisfaction!
The Empathic Systems Project is funded by NSF CNS-0720691
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