427 research outputs found
Joint VNF Placement and CPU Allocation in 5G
Thanks to network slicing, 5G networks will support
a variety of services in a flexible and swift manner. In this context,
we seek to make high-quality, joint optimal decisions concerning
the placement of VNFs across the physical hosts for realizing the
services, and the allocation of CPU resources in VNFs sharing
a host. To this end, we present a queuing-based system model,
accounting for all the entities involved in 5G networks. Then,
we propose a fast and efficient solution strategy yielding nearoptimal
decisions.We evaluate our approach in multiple scenarios
that well represent real-world services, and find it to consistently
outperform state-of-the-art alternatives and closely match the
optimum.This work is partially supported by the European Commission through the H2020 5G-TRANSFORMER project (Project ID 761536)En prens
Dynamic, Latency-Optimal vNF Placement at the Network Edge
Future networks are expected to support low-latency, context-aware and user-specific services in a highly flexible and efficient manner. One approach to support emerging use cases such as, e.g., virtual reality and in-network image processing is to introduce virtualized network functions (vNF)s at the edge of the network, placed in close proximity to the end users to reduce end-to-end latency, time-to-response, and unnecessary utilisation in the core network. While placement of vNFs has been studied before, it has so far mostly focused on reducing the utilisation of server resources (i.e., minimising the number of servers required in the network to run a specific set of vNFs), and not taking network conditions into consideration such as, e.g., end-to-end latency, the constantly changing network dynamics, or user mobility patterns. In this paper, we formulate the Edge vNF placement problem to allocate vNFs to a distributed edge infrastructure, minimising end-to-end latency from all users to their associated vNFs. We present a way to dynamically re-schedule the optimal placement of vNFs based on temporal network-wide latency fluctuations using optimal stopping theory. We then evaluate our dynamic scheduler over a simulated nation-wide backbone network using real-world ISP latency characteristics. We show that our proposed dynamic placement scheduler minimises vNF migrations compared to other schedulers (e.g., periodic and always-on scheduling of a new placement), and offers Quality of Service guarantees by not exceeding a maximum number of latency violations that can be tolerated by certain applications
Virtualisation and resource allocation in MECEnabled metro optical networks
The appearance of new network services and the ever-increasing network traffic and number
of connected devices will push the evolution of current communication networks towards the
Future Internet.
In the area of optical networks, wavelength routed optical networks (WRONs) are evolving
to elastic optical networks (EONs) in which, thanks to the use of OFDM or Nyquist WDM,
it is possible to create super-channels with custom-size bandwidth. The basic element in
these networks is the lightpath, i.e., all-optical circuits between two network nodes. The
establishment of lightpaths requires the selection of the route that they will follow and the
portion of the spectrum to be used in order to carry the requested traffic from the source to
the destination node. That problem is known as the routing and spectrum assignment (RSA)
problem, and new algorithms must be proposed to address this design problem.
Some early studies on elastic optical networks studied gridless scenarios, in which a slice
of spectrum of variable size is assigned to a request. However, the most common approach to
the spectrum allocation is to divide the spectrum into slots of fixed width and allocate multiple,
consecutive spectrum slots to each lightpath, depending on the requested bandwidth. Moreover,
EONs also allow the proposal of more flexible routing and spectrum assignment techniques,
like the split-spectrum approach in which the request is divided into multiple "sub-lightpaths".
In this thesis, four RSA algorithms are proposed combining two different levels of
flexibility with the well-known k-shortest paths and first fit heuristics. After comparing the
performance of those methods, a novel spectrum assignment technique, Best Gap, is proposed
to overcome the inefficiencies emerged when combining the first fit heuristic with highly
flexible networks. A simulation study is presented to demonstrate that, thanks to the use of
Best Gap, EONs can exploit the network flexibility and reduce the blocking ratio.
On the other hand, operators must face profound architectural changes to increase the
adaptability and flexibility of networks and ease their management. Thanks to the use of
network function virtualisation (NFV), the necessary network functions that must be applied
to offer a service can be deployed as virtual appliances hosted by commodity servers, which
can be located in data centres, network nodes or even end-user premises. The appearance of
new computation and networking paradigms, like multi-access edge computing (MEC), may
facilitate the adaptation of communication networks to the new demands. Furthermore, the
use of MEC technology will enable the possibility of installing those virtual network functions
(VNFs) not only at data centres (DCs) and central offices (COs), traditional hosts of VFNs, but
also at the edge nodes of the network. Since data processing is performed closer to the enduser,
the latency associated to each service connection request can be reduced. MEC nodes
will be usually connected between them and with the DCs and COs by optical networks.
In such a scenario, deploying a network service requires completing two phases: the
VNF-placement, i.e., deciding the number and location of VNFs, and the VNF-chaining,
i.e., connecting the VNFs that the traffic associated to a service must transverse in order to
establish the connection. In the chaining process, not only the existence of VNFs with available
processing capacity, but the availability of network resources must be taken into account to
avoid the rejection of the connection request. Taking into consideration that the backhaul of
this scenario will be usually based on WRONs or EONs, it is necessary to design the virtual
topology (i.e., the set of lightpaths established in the networks) in order to transport the tra c
from one node to another. The process of designing the virtual topology includes deciding the
number of connections or lightpaths, allocating them a route and spectral resources, and finally
grooming the traffic into the created lightpaths.
Lastly, a failure in the equipment of a node in an NFV environment can cause the
disruption of the SCs traversing the node. This can cause the loss of huge amounts of data
and affect thousands of end-users. In consequence, it is key to provide the network with faultmanagement
techniques able to guarantee the resilience of the established connections when a
node fails.
For the mentioned reasons, it is necessary to design orchestration algorithms which solve
the VNF-placement, chaining and network resource allocation problems in 5G networks
with optical backhaul. Moreover, some versions of those algorithms must also implements
protection techniques to guarantee the resilience system in case of failure.
This thesis makes contribution in that line. Firstly, a genetic algorithm is proposed to solve
the VNF-placement and VNF-chaining problems in a 5G network with optical backhaul based
on star topology: GASM (genetic algorithm for effective service mapping). Then, we propose
a modification of that algorithm in order to be applied to dynamic scenarios in which the
reconfiguration of the planning is allowed. Furthermore, we enhanced the modified algorithm
to include a learning step, with the objective of improving the performance of the algorithm.
In this thesis, we also propose an algorithm to solve not only the VNF-placement and
VNF-chaining problems but also the design of the virtual topology, considering that a WRON
is deployed as the backhaul network connecting MEC nodes and CO. Moreover, a version
including individual VNF protection against node failure has been also proposed and the
effect of using shared/dedicated and end-to-end SC/individual VNF protection schemes are
also analysed.
Finally, a new algorithm that solves the VNF-placement and chaining problems and
the virtual topology design implementing a new chaining technique is also proposed.
Its corresponding versions implementing individual VNF protection are also presented.
Furthermore, since the method works with any type of WDM mesh topologies, a technoeconomic
study is presented to compare the effect of using different network topologies in
both the network performance and cost.Departamento de Teoría de la Señal y Comunicaciones e Ingeniería TelemáticaDoctorado en Tecnologías de la Información y las Telecomunicacione
Hardware-accelerator aware VNF-chain recovery
Hardware-accelerators in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) environments have aided telecommunications companies (telcos) to reduce their expenditures by offloading compute-intensive VNFs to hardware-accelerators. To fully utilize the benefits of hardware-accelerators, VNF-chain recovery models need to be adapted. In this paper, we present an ILP model for optimizing prioritized recovery of VNF-chains in heterogeneous NFV environments following node failures. We also propose an accelerator-aware heuristic for solving prioritized VNF-chain recovery problems of large-size in a reasonable time. Evaluation results show that the performance of heuristic matches with that of ILP in regard to restoration of high and medium priority VNF-chains and a small penalty occurs only for low-priority VNF-chains
VNF Placement and Resource Allocation for the Support of Vertical Services in 5G Networks
One of the main goals of 5G networks is to support the technological and business needs of various industries (the so-called verticals), which wish to offer to their customers a wide range of services characterized by diverse performance requirements. In this context, a critical challenge lies in mapping in an automated manner the requirements of verticals into decisions concerning the network infrastructure, including VNF placement, resource assignment, and traffic routing. In this paper, we seek to make such decisions jointly, accounting for their mutual interaction, efficiently. To this end, we formulate a queuing-based model and use it at the network orchestrator to optimally match the vertical's requirements to the available system resources. We then propose a fast and efficient solution strategy, called MaxZ, which allows us to reduce the solution complexity. Our performance evaluation, carried out an accounting for multiple scenarios representing the real-world services, shows that MaxZ performs substantially better than the state-of-the-art alternatives and consistently close to the optimum.This work was supported by
the European Commission under the H2020 projects 5G-TRANSFORMER
(Project ID 761536) and 5G-EVE (Project ID 815074
Offline and online power aware resource allocation algorithms with migration and delay constraints
© . This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/In order to handle advanced mobile broadband services and Internet of Things (IoT), future Internet and 5G networks are expected to leverage the use of network virtualization, be much faster, have greater capacities, provide lower latencies, and significantly be power efficient than current mobile technologies. Therefore, this paper proposes three power aware algorithms for offline, online, and migration applications, solving the resource allocation problem within the frameworks of network function virtualization (NFV) environments in fractions of a second. The proposed algorithms target minimizing the total costs and power consumptions in the physical network through sufficiently allocating the least physical resources to host the demands of the virtual network services, and put into saving mode all other not utilized physical components. Simulations and evaluations of the offline algorithm compared to the state-of-art resulted on lower total costs by 32%. In addition to that, the online algorithm was tested through four different experiments, and the results argued that the overall power consumption of the physical network was highly dependent on the demands’ lifetimes, and the strictness of the required end-to-end delay. Regarding migrations during online, the results concluded that the proposed algorithms would be most effective when applied for maintenance and emergency conditions.Peer ReviewedPreprin
Genetic algorithm for holistic VNF-mapping and virtual topology design
Producción CientíficaNext generation of Internet of Things (IoT) services imposes stringent requirements to the future networks that current ones cannot fulfill. 5G is a technology born to give response to those requirements. However, the deployment of 5G is also accompanied by profound architectural changes in the network, including the introduction of technologies like multi-access edge computing (MEC), software defined networking (SDN), and network function virtualization (NFV). In particular, NFV poses diverse challenges like virtual network function (VNF) placement and chaining, also called VNF-mapping. In this paper, we present an algorithm that solves VNF-placement and chaining in a metro WDM optical network equipped with MEC resources. Therefore, it solves the VNF-mapping in conjunction with the virtual topology design of the underlying optical backhaul network. Moreover, a version of the method providing protection against node failures is also presented. A simulation study is presented to show the importance of designing the three problems jointly, in contrast to other proposals of the literature that do not take the design of the underlying network into consideration when solving that problem. Furthermore, this paper also shows the advantages of using collaboration between MEC nodes to solve the VNF-mapping problem and the advantage of using shared protection schemes. The new algorithm outperforms other proposals in terms of both service blocking ratio, and number of active CPUs (thus reducing energy consumption). Finally, the impact of deploying different physical topologies for the optical backhaul network is also presented.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (grant TEC2017-84423-C3-1-P)Ministerio de Industria, Comercio y Turismo (grant BES 2015-074514)Spanish Thematic Network (contract RED2018-102585-T)INTERREG V-A España-Portugal (POCTEP) program (project 0677_DISRUPTIVE_2_E
IT and Multi-layer Online Resource Allocation and Offline Planning in Metropolitan Networks
Metropolitan networks are undergoing a major technological breakthrough leveraging the capabilities of software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV). NFV permits the deployment of virtualized network functions (VNFs) on commodity hardware appliances which can be combined with SDN flexibility and programmability of the network infrastructure. SDN/NFV-enabled networks require decision-making in two time scales: short-term online resource allocation and mid-to-long term offline planning. In this paper, we first tackle the dimensioning of SDN/NFV-enabled metropolitan networks paying special attention to the role that latency plays in the capacity planning. We focus on a specific use-case: the metropolitan network that covers the Murcia - Alicante Spanish regions. Then, we propose a latency-aware multilayer service-chain allocation (LA-ML-SCA) algorithm to explore a range of maximum latency requirements and their impact on the resources for dimensioning the metropolitan network. We observe that design costs increase for low latency requirements as more data center facilities need to be spread to get closer to the network edge, reducing the economies of scale on the IT infrastructure. Subsequently, we review our recent joint computation of multi-site VNF placement and multilayer resource allocation in the deployment of a network service in a metro network. Specifically, a set of subroutines contained in LA-ML-SCA are experimentally validated in a network optimization-as-a-service architecture that assists an Open-Source MANO instance, virtual infrastructure managers and WAN controllers in a metro network test-bed.Grant numbers : Go2Edge - Engineering Future Edge Computing Networks, Systems and Services.@ 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works
- …