77 research outputs found
A Scalable Approach for Service Chain (SC) Mapping with Multiple SC Instances in a Wide-Area Network
Network Function Virtualization (NFV) aims to simplify deployment of network
services by running Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) on commercial
off-the-shelf servers. Service deployment involves placement of VNFs and
in-sequence routing of traffic flows through VNFs comprising a Service Chain
(SC). The joint VNF placement and traffic routing is called SC mapping. In a
Wide-Area Network (WAN), a situation may arise where several traffic flows,
generated by many distributed node pairs, require the same SC; then, a single
instance (or occurrence) of that SC might not be enough. SC mapping with
multiple SC instances for the same SC turns out to be a very complex problem,
since the sequential traversal of VNFs has to be maintained while accounting
for traffic flows in various directions. Our study is the first to deal with
the problem of SC mapping with multiple SC instances to minimize network
resource consumption. We first propose an Integer Linear Program (ILP) to solve
this problem. Since ILP does not scale to large networks, we develop a
column-generation-based ILP (CG-ILP) model. However, we find that exact
mathematical modeling of the problem results in quadratic constraints in our
CG-ILP. The quadratic constraints are made linear but even the scalability of
CG-ILP is limited. Hence, we also propose a two-phase column-generation-based
approach to get results over large network topologies within reasonable
computational times. Using such an approach, we observe that an appropriate
choice of only a small set of SC instances can lead to a solution very close to
the minimum bandwidth consumption. Further, this approach also helps us to
analyze the effects of number of VNF replicas and number of NFV nodes on
bandwidth consumption when deploying these minimum number of SC instances.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1704.0671
Effectiveness of segment routing technology in reducing the bandwidth and cloud resources provisioning times in network function virtualization architectures
Network Function Virtualization is a new technology allowing for a elastic cloud and bandwidth resource allocation. The technology requires an orchestrator whose role is the service and resource orchestration. It receives service requests, each one characterized by a Service Function Chain, which is a set of service functions to be executed according to a given order. It implements an algorithm for deciding where both to allocate the cloud and bandwidth resources and to route the SFCs. In a traditional orchestration algorithm, the orchestrator has a detailed knowledge of the cloud and network infrastructures and that can lead to high computational complexity of the SFC Routing and Cloud and Bandwidth resource Allocation (SRCBA) algorithm. In this paper, we propose and evaluate the effectiveness of a scalable orchestration architecture inherited by the one proposed within the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and based on the functional separation of an NFV orchestrator in Resource Orchestrator (RO) and Network Service Orchestrator (NSO). Each cloud domain is equipped with an RO whose task is to provide a simple and abstract representation of the cloud infrastructure. These representations are notified of the NSO that can apply a simplified and less complex SRCBA algorithm. In addition, we show how the segment routing technology can help to simplify the SFC routing by means of an effective addressing of the service functions. The scalable orchestration solution has been investigated and compared to the one of a traditional orchestrator in some network scenarios and varying the number of cloud domains. We have verified that the execution time of the SRCBA algorithm can be drastically reduced without degrading the performance in terms of cloud and bandwidth resource costs
Low-latency and Resource-efficient Service Function Chaining Orchestration in Network Function Virtualization
© 2014 IEEE. Recently, network function virtualization (NFV) has been proposed to solve the dilemma faced by traditional networks and to improve network performance through hardware and software decoupling. The deployment of the service function chain (SFC) is a key technology that affects the performance of virtual network function (VNF). The key issue in the deployment of SFCs is proposing effective algorithms to achieve efficient use of resources. In this article, we propose an SFC deployment optimization (SFCDO) algorithm based on a breadth-first search (BFS). The algorithm first uses a BFS-based algorithm to find the shortest path between the source node and the destination node. Then, based on the shortest path, the path with the fewest hops is preferentially chosen to implement the SFC deployment. Finally, we compare the performances with the greedy and simulated annealing (G-SA) algorithm. The experiment results show that the proposed algorithm is optimized in terms of end-to-end delay and bandwidth resource consumption. In addition, we also consider the load rate of the nodes to achieve network load balancing
Enabling Scalable and Sustainable Softwarized 5G Environments
The fifth generation of telecommunication systems (5G) is foreseen to play a fundamental
role in our socio-economic growth by supporting various and radically new vertical
applications (such as Industry 4.0, eHealth, Smart Cities/Electrical Grids, to name
a few), as a one-fits-all technology that is enabled by emerging softwarization solutions
\u2013 specifically, the Fog, Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), Network Functions Virtualization
(NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) paradigms. Notwithstanding
the notable potential of the aforementioned technologies, a number of open issues
still need to be addressed to ensure their complete rollout. This thesis is particularly developed
towards addressing the scalability and sustainability issues in softwarized 5G
environments through contributions in three research axes: a) Infrastructure Modeling
and Analytics, b) Network Slicing and Mobility Management, and c) Network/Services Management
and Control. The main contributions include a model-based analytics approach
for real-time workload profiling and estimation of network key performance indicators
(KPIs) in NFV infrastructures (NFVIs), as well as a SDN-based multi-clustering approach
to scale geo-distributed virtual tenant networks (VTNs) and to support seamless
user/service mobility; building on these, solutions to the problems of resource consolidation,
service migration, and load balancing are also developed in the context of 5G.
All in all, this generally entails the adoption of Stochastic Models, Mathematical Programming,
Queueing Theory, Graph Theory and Team Theory principles, in the context
of Green Networking, NFV and SDN
Availability-driven NFV orchestration
Virtual Network Functions as a Service (VNFaaS) is a promising business whose technical directions consist of providing network functions as a Service instead of delivering standalone network appliances, leveraging a virtualized environment named NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) to provide higher scalability and reduce maintenance costs. Operating the NFVI under stringent availability guarantees is fundamental to ensure the proper functioning of the VNFaaS against software attacks and failures, as well as common physical device failures. Indeed the availability of a VNFaaS relies on the failure rate of its single components, namely the physical servers, the hypervisor, the VNF software, and the communication network. In this paper, we propose a versatile orchestration model able to integrate an elastic VNF protection strategy with the goal to maximize the availability of an NFVI system serving multiple VNF demands. The elasticity derives from (i) the ability to use VNF protection only if needed, or (ii) to pass from dedicated protection scheme to shared VNF protection scheme when needed for a subset of the VNFs, (iii) to integrate traffic split and load-balancing as well as mastership role election in the orchestration decision, (iv) to adjust the placement of VNF masters and slaves based on the availability of the different system and network components involved. We propose a VNF orchestration algorithm based on Variable Neighboring Search, able to integrate both protection schemes in a scalable way and capable to scale, while outperforming standard online policies
Re-designing Dynamic Content Delivery in the Light of a Virtualized Infrastructure
We explore the opportunities and design options enabled by novel SDN and NFV
technologies, by re-designing a dynamic Content Delivery Network (CDN) service.
Our system, named MOSTO, provides performance levels comparable to that of a
regular CDN, but does not require the deployment of a large distributed
infrastructure. In the process of designing the system, we identify relevant
functions that could be integrated in the future Internet infrastructure. Such
functions greatly simplify the design and effectiveness of services such as
MOSTO. We demonstrate our system using a mixture of simulation, emulation,
testbed experiments and by realizing a proof-of-concept deployment in a
planet-wide commercial cloud system.Comment: Extended version of the paper accepted for publication in JSAC
special issue on Emerging Technologies in Software-Driven Communication -
November 201
Dynamic VNF Placement, Resource Allocation and Traffic Routing in 5G  
5G networks are going to support a variety of vertical services, with a
diverse set of key performance indicators (KPIs), by using enabling
technologies such as software-defined networking and network function
virtualization. It is the responsibility of the network operator to efficiently
allocate the available resources to the service requests in such a way to honor
KPI requirements, while accounting for the limited quantity of available
resources and their cost. A critical challenge is that requests may be highly
varying over time, requiring a solution that accounts for their dynamic
generation and termination. With this motivation, we seek to make joint
decisions for request admission, resource activation, VNF placement, resource
allocation, and traffic routing. We do so by considering real-world aspects
such as the setup times of virtual machines, with the goal of maximizing the
mobile network operator profit. To this end, first, we formulate a one-shot
optimization problem which can attain the optimum solution for small size
problems given the complete knowledge of arrival and departure times of
requests over the entire system lifespan. We then propose an efficient and
practical heuristic solution that only requires this knowledge for the next
time period and works for realistically-sized scenarios. Finally, we evaluate
the performance of these solutions using real-world services and large-scale
network topologies. {Results demonstrate that our heuristic solution performs
better than a state-of-the-art online approach and close to the optimum
Network Function Virtualization in Dynamic Networks: A Stochastic Perspective
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE via the DOI in this recordAs a key enabling technology for 5G network
softwarization, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) provides
an efficient paradigm to optimize network resource utility for
the benefits of both network providers and users. However,
the inherent network dynamics and uncertainties from 5G
infrastructure, resources and applications are slowing down
the further adoption of NFV in many emerging networking
applications. Motivated by this, in this paper, we investigate
the issues of network utility degradation when implementing
NFV in dynamic networks, and design a proactive NFV solution
from a fully stochastic perspective. Unlike existing deterministic
NFV solutions, which assume given network capacities and/or
static service quality demands, this paper explicitly integrates
the knowledge of influential network variations into a twostage
stochastic resource utilization model. By exploiting the
hierarchical decision structures in this problem, a distributed
computing framework with two-level decomposition is designed
to facilitate a distributed implementation of the proposed model
in large-scale networks. The experimental results demonstrate
that the proposed solution not only improves 3∼5 folds of network
performance, but also effectively reduces the risk of service
quality violation.The work of Xiangle Cheng is partially supported by the
China Scholarship Council for the study at the University of
Exeter. This work is also partially supported by the UK EPSRC
project (Grant No.: EP/R030863/1)
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