Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Sum of squares: a new metric for NFV service chain placement in edge computing environments and efficient heuristic algorithms

  • Regular Paper
  • Published:
CCF Transactions on Networking

Abstract

Both network function virtualization (NFV) and edge computing (EC), especially the latter, are attracting more and more attention in recent years. A growing number of network service providers are migrating their services from the cloud to the edge for better QoS services, while the recent researches on NFV also concentrate on deploying NFV services in edge computing networks. However, NFV deployment in edge networks is a troublesome challenge and is fairly alien from conventional NFV deployment problems in data centres. Edge network differs from the data center network in the following two aspects: firstly, edge nodes are constrained in computing capacity, and secondly, the network connections between edge nodes are unstable and dynamic, which may show large variance over time. This means edge computing should be designed for high-efficient use of physical edge nodes’ resources. To address the challenges above, we investigate a new NFV Service Chain Placement problem in edge computing environments (NSCP-EC) in this paper. We first prove that the NSCP-EC problem is NP-complete. Then we propose a new metric which can better measure the capacity utilization rate of physical resources, and analyze its advantages with details. Based on the new metric, we propose two heuristic but efficient algorithms called MINI and MINI-tree. To confirm the performance of the two algorithms, we conduct simulations. The result demonstrates that MINI gains an advantage over genetic algorithm (GA) and MINI-tree orevails over MINI in tree topology conditions in the aspects of physical resource utilization, acceptance rate and running time. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results confirm the feasibility of the algorithms.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abu-Lebdeh, M., Naboulsi, D., Glitho, R., Tchouati, C.W.: On the placement of vnf managers in large-scale and distributed nfv systems. IEEE TNSM 14(4), 875–889 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  • Andrews, J.G., Buzzi, S., Choi, W., Hanly, S.V., Lozano, A., Soong, A.C., Zhang, J.C.: What will 5g be? IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun. 32(6), 1065–1082 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aral, A., Ovatman, T.: A decentralized replica placement algorithm for edge computing. IEEE Trans. Netw. Serv. Manag. 15(2), 516–529 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpio, F., Dhahri, S., Jukan, A.: Vnf placement with replication for loac balancing in nfv networks. In: Proceedings of ICC 2017, pp. 1–6. IEEE (2017)

  • Chiosi, M., Clarke, D., Willis, P., Reid, A., Feger, J., Bugenhagen, M., Khan, W., Fargano, M., Cui, C., Deng, H., et al.: Network functions virtualisation: an introduction, benefits, enablers, challenges and call for action. In: SDN and OpenFlow World Congress, pp. 22–24 (2012)

  • Cohen, R., Lewin-Eytan, L., Naor, J.S., Raz, D.: Near optimal placement of virtual network functions. In: Computer communications (INFOCOM), 2015 IEEE Conference on, pp. 1346–1354. IEEE (2015)

  • Cziva, R., Anagnostopoulos, C., Pezaros, D.P.: Dynamic, latency-optimal vnf placement at the network edge. In: IEEE INFOCOM 2018-IEEE conference on computer communications, pp. 693–701. IEEE (2018)

  • Cziva, R., Pezaros, D.P.: Container network functions: bringing nfv to the network edge. IEEE Commun. Mag. 55(6), 24–31 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ghaznavi, M., Khan, A., Shahriar, N., Alsubhi, K., Ahmed, R., Boutaba, R.: Elastic virtual network function placement. In: Cloud networking (CloudNet), 2015 IEEE 4th international conference on, pp. 255–260. IEEE (2015)

  • Han, B., Gopalakrishnan, V., Ji, L., Lee, S.: Network function virtualization: challenges and opportunities for innovations. IEEE Commun. Mag. 53(2), 90–97 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hu, Y.C., Patel, M., Sabella, D., Sprecher, N., Young, V.: Mobile edge computing—a key technology towards 5g. ETSI White Paper 11(11), 1–16 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  • Jang, M., Lee, H., Schwan, K., Bhardwaj, K.: Soul: an edge-cloud system for mobile applications in a sensor-rich world. In: IEEE/ACM symposium on edge computing (SEC), pp. 155–167. IEEE (2016)

  • Jemaa, F.B., Pujolle, G., Pariente, M.: Qos-aware vnf placement optimization in edge-central carrier cloud architecture. In: Global communications conference (GLOBECOM), 2016 IEEE, pp. 1–7. IEEE (2016)

  • Kapoor, R., Porter, G., Tewari, M., Voelker, G.M., Vahdat, A.: Chronos: predictable low latency for data center applications. In: Proceedings of the third ACM symposium on cloud computing, p. 9. ACM (2012)

  • Karmarkar, N., Karp, R.M.: An efficient approximation scheme for the one-dimensional bin-packing problem. In: Foundations of computer science, 1982. SFCS’08. 23rd annual symposium on, pp. 312–320. IEEE (1982)

  • Kuo, T.W., Liou, B.H., Lin, K.C.J., Tsai, M.J.: Deploying chains of virtual network functions: on the relation between link and server usage. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. (TON) 26(4), 1562–1576 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liu, Q., Huang, S., Opadere, J., Han, T.: An edge network orchestrator for mobile augmented reality. In: IEEE INFOCOM 2018-IEEE conference on computer communications, pp. 756–764. IEEE (2018)

  • Luizelli, M.C., Raz, D., Sa’ar, Y.: Optimizing nfv chain deployment through minimizing the cost of virtual switching. In: IEEE INFOCOM 2018-IEEE conference on computer communications, pp. 2150–2158. IEEE (2018)

  • Ma, W., Beltran, J., Pan, Z., Pan, D., Pissinou, N.: Sdn-based traffic aware placement of nfv middleboxes. IEEE TNSM 14(3), 528–542 (2017a)

    Google Scholar 

  • Ma, W., Sandoval, O., Beltran, J., Pan, D., Pissinou, N.: Traffic aware placement of interdependent nfv middleboxes. In: INFOCOM 2017-IEEE conference on computer communications, pp. 1–9. IEEE (2017b)

  • Manzalini, A., Saracco, R.: Software networks at the edge: a shift of paradigm. In: Future networks and services (SDN4FNS), 2013 IEEE SDN for, pp. 1–6. IEEE (2013)

  • Mehraghdam, S., Keller, M., Karl, H.: Specifying and placing chains of virtual network functions. In: Cloud networking (CloudNet), 2014 IEEE 3rd international conference on, pp. 7–13. IEEE (2014)

  • Seiden, S.S.: On the online bin packing problem. J. ACM (JACM) 49(5), 640–671 (2002)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Shi, W., Cao, J., Zhang, Q., Li, Y., Xu, L.: Edge computing: vision and challenges. IEEE Internet Things J. 3(5), 637–646 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tan, H., Han, Z., Li, X.Y., Lau, F.C.: Online job dispatching and scheduling in edge-clouds. In: INFOCOM 2017-IEEE conference on computer communications, IEEE, pp. 1–9. IEEE (2017)

  • Tong, L., Li, Y., Gao, W.: A hierarchical edge cloud architecture for mobile computing. In: INFOCOM 2016-The 35th annual ieee international conference on computer communications, IEEE, pp. 1–9. IEEE (2016)

  • Vazirani, V.V.: Approximation algorithms. Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media, (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  • Vizarreta, P., Condoluci, M., Machuca, C.M., Mahmoodi, T., Kellerer, W.: Qos-driven function placement reducing expenditures in nfv deployments. In: Proceedings of ICC 2017, pp. 1–7. IEEE (2017)

  • Wang, S., Zafer, M., Leung, K.K.: Online placement of multi-component applications in edge computing environments. IEEE Access 5, 2514–2533 (2017a)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, C., Zhang, S., Zhang, H., Qian, Z., Lu, S.: Edge cloud capacity allocation for low delay computing on mobile devices. In: 2017 IEEE international symposium on parallel and distributed processing with applications, pp. 1–8. IEEE (2017b)

  • Wang, L., Jiao, L., He, T., Li, J., Mühlhäuser, M.: Service entity placement for social virtual reality applications in edge computing. In: Proceedings of INFOCOM (2018)

  • Yu, M., Yi, Y., Rexford, J., Chiang, M.: Rethinking virtual network embedding: substrate support for path splitting and migration. ACM SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 38(2), 17–29 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFB1001801), NSFC (61872175), Jiangsu NSF (BK20181252), CCF-Tencent Open Fund, Ministry of Education & China Mobile Research Foundation (MCM20170307) and Collaborative Innovation Center of Novel Software Technology and Industrialization.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Lab. for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing , P.R. China

    Zhiqi Chen, Sheng Zhang, Zhuzhong Qian, Can Wang & Sanglu Lu

  2. School of Computer Science and Technology/Suzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Mingjun Xiao

  3. Center for Networked Computing, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA

    Jie Wu

Authors
  1. Zhiqi Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Sheng Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Zhuzhong Qian
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Can Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Mingjun Xiao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Jie Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Sanglu Lu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sheng Zhang.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Chen, Z., Zhang, S., Qian, Z. et al. Sum of squares: a new metric for NFV service chain placement in edge computing environments and efficient heuristic algorithms. CCF Trans. Netw. 3, 140–153 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42045-020-00030-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42045-020-00030-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation