1. Demand-Aware Network Function Placement
Abstract:
Network function virtualization is an emerging network resource utilization
approach which decouples network functions from proprietary hardware and
enables adaptive services to end-user requests. To accommodate the network
function requests, network function instances are created and deployed at
runtime. In this paper, we study a network virtualization scheme to orchestrate
and manage networking and network function services. We propose an
integrated design for network function instance allocation and end-to-end
demand realization sharing the same physical substrate network and
demonstrate that the corresponding network design problem is NP complete. A
mixed-integer programming formulation is proposed first to find its optimal
solution, followed by a two-player pure-strategy game model which captures the
competition on physical resources between network function instance allocation
and routing. We then design an algorithm based on iterative weakly dominated
elimination in Game Theory. Computational results demonstrate the value of the
integrated approach and its ability to allocate network function instances
supporting end-to-end requests with limited physical resources in optical
networks.