MUTE: MUlti-Tier Edge Networks

Several Internet-of-Things (IoT) based use-cases require an increased amount of computation resources with extremely low latency. Cloud-based services may fail to provide such requirement given the high latency required to access their facilities. Therefore, an increasing number of resources are being deployed at the network "edge" as Edge Clouds. However, as the modeling of edge network is still in its early stages, the existing solutions for service placement and resource utilization are found to be quite inefficient. In this paper, we model a multi-tier edge network and propose a service placement algorithm, Mute. In our evaluation, performed on real network topologies, we show that Mute achieves 66% reduction in network cost and 50% reduction in service placement when compared to state-of-the-art solutions.Peer reviewe

Virtual-Mobile-Core Placement for Metro Network

Traditional highly-centralized mobile core networks (e.g., Evolved Packet Core (EPC)) need to be constantly upgraded both in their network functions and backhaul links, to meet increasing traffic demands. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is being investigated as a potential cost-effective solution for this upgrade. A virtual mobile core (here, virtual EPC, vEPC) provides deployment flexibility and scalability while reducing costs, network-resource consumption and application delay. Moreover, a distributed deployment of vEPC is essential for emerging paradigms like Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC). In this work, we show that significant reduction in networkresource consumption can be achieved as a result of optimal placement of vEPC functions in metro area. Further, we show that not all vEPC functions need to be distributed. In our study, for the first time, we account for vEPC interactions in both data and control planes (Non-Access Stratum (NAS) signaling procedure Service Chains (SCs) with application latency requirements) using a detailed mathematical model