The cost of quality of service : SLA aware VNF placement and routing using column generation

In the Network Function Virtualization (NFV) paradigm, Internet Service Providers (ISP) provide network services to customers by routing and processing traffic through an ordered sequence of Virtual Network Functions (VNF). The Quality of the Service (QoS) depends on the quantity and relative placement of the VNFs, and is quantified by a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in a Service Level Agreement (SLA): a contract reached between the ISP and customer. In order to provide the service in line with the SLA, ISPs must consider the SLA constraints directly when placing VNFs and provisioning the network services in the physical network infrastructure. In this paper, we present a VNF placement and routing algorithm based on the column generation method which iterates between generating improving paths, and optimising the placement of the VNFs given the generated paths. SLA constraints are modelled as soft constraints for which violation incurs a cost, the sum of which is minimised. Unlike prior approaches, we consider the throughput, latency and availability SLA constraints. We validate our approach against a heuristic greedy algorithm, on a multi-tiered Radio Access Network (RAN) and show that the column generation method provides solutions with significantly lower SLA violation cost versus the greedy approach, while still being able to solve problems of a practical size. We also highlight that satisfying QoS can significantly increase the number of host nodes required, thus a trade-off exists between QoS and operational cost which should be explored further

AI-powered edge computing evolution for beyond 5G communication networks

Edge computing is a key enabling technology that is expected to play a crucial role in beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G communication networks. By bringing computation closer to where the data is generated, and leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities for advanced automation and orchestration, edge computing can enable a wide range of emerging applications with extreme requirements in terms of latency and computation, across multiple vertical domains. In this context, this paper first discusses the key technological challenges for the seamless integration of edge computing within B5G/6G and then presents a roadmap for the edge computing evolution, proposing a novel design approach for an open, intelligent, trustworthy, and distributed edge architecture.VERGE has received funding from the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 101096034.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

When To Stop Verification? Statistical Trade-Off Between Expected Loss And Simulation Cost

Exhaustive state space exploration based verification of embedded system designs remains a challenge despite three decades of active research into Model Checking. On the other hand, simulation based verification of even critical embedded system designs is often subject to financial budget considerations in practice. In this paper, we suggest an algorithm that minimizes the overall cost of producing an embedded system including the cost of testing the embedded system and expected losses from an incompletely tested design. We seek to quantify the trade-off between the budget for testing and the potential financial loss from an incorrect design. We demonstrate that our algorithm needs only a logarithmic number of test samples in the cost of the potential loss from an incorrect validation result. We also show that our approach remains sound when only upper bounds on the potential loss and lower bounds on the cost of simulation are available. We present experimental evidence to corroborate our theoretical results. © 2011 EDAA