Reliability-Aware Service Function Chain Backup Protection Method

Abstract

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) decouples network functions from hardware, improves the flexibility of resource allocation, and enhances network scalability. Any failures of software and hardware in an NFV environment will result in the interruption of Service Function Chains (SFCs). As one of the key technologies of 5G, NFV has more stringent delay and reliability requirements for services. This paper takes software and hardware failures into account, and proposes a reliability-aware service function chain backup protection (RABP) method to meet SFCs' high reliability and low latency demands. First, we formulate a mixed-integer linear programming model to maximize the revenue-to-cost ratio. Then, we propose a heuristic algorithm for suboptimal solutions. SFC deployment is divided into two stages: primary virtual network function (VNF) deployment and backup VNF deployment. The reliability enhancement and delay optimization deployment method is presented to deploy primary VNFs. A breadth-first search method is used to consolidate primary VNFs as much as possible to improve reliability of SFCs and reduce transmission delay. When deploying backup VNFs, a resource-efficient backup selection method is presented to reduce backup resource consumption while meeting reliability demands. Finally, experiment results show that the proposed RABP method not only has the best acceptance ratio and long-term average revenue to cost ratio, but also reduces backup resource consumption and transmission delay.

Service Function Chaining to Support Ultra-Low Latency Communication in NFV

“…A greedy algorithm is a type of algorithm that aims to solve a problem by iteratively selecting the locally optimal choice at each step. Several studies [13,[30][31][32][33][34] have utilized the widely recognized greedy method as a comparative approach for evaluating the SFC deployment problem. While a greedy algorithm is often characterized by its simplicity and efficiency, this does not guarantee the attainment of an optimal solution in all cases.…”

A security-aware service function chain deployment method for load balance and delay optimization

“…Network function and hardware are tightly coupled in traditional network. Network services require specialized hardware modules, which increase the difficulties associated with scaling and network management, and result in high resource consumption 1 , 2 . There is a constant increase in network congestion and delay due to the hundreds of millions of smart connected devices and an increase in mobile data traffic.…”