Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Many factors may lead to congestion in wireless networks including excessive traffic bursting, overbooking, rerouting, ingress policing, and more. Such congestion may increase stress on both bandwidth and buffering which in turn may cause delays and increased data loss that may lead to link dropping. Furthermore, wireless networks are increasingly required to support mobile devices having non-telephonic functionality, such as mobile telephones equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) functionality, electronic book readers, gaming consoles, and the like. Many of these devices (such as GPS trackers in particular) attempt to maintain network connections for large fractions of the time while sending relatively little data and may be expected to place increased bandwidth demands on wireless networks.
One factor that may contribute to congestion in wireless networks includes mobile device “tethering” (e.g., the use of a mobile device to provide internet access to additional devices). A few high impact users with tethering can dramatically impact bandwidth needs. Historically, wireless carriers have typically ignored users who tether but don't use up too much bandwidth. Alternatively, wireless carriers have begun to move to limited data plans and extra charges for tethering in order to prevent adverse impacts of such tethering.