The Next Generation Platform as A Service: Composition and Deployment of Platforms and Services

The emergence of widespread cloudification and virtualisation promises increased flexibility, scalability, and programmability for the deployment of services by Vertical Service Providers (VSPs). This cloudification also improves service and network management, reducing the Capital and Operational Expenses (CAPEX, OPEX). A truly cloud-native approach is essential, since 5G will provide a diverse range of services - many requiring stringent performance guarantees while maximising flexibility and agility despite the technological diversity. This paper proposes a workflow based on the principles of build-to-order, Build-Ship-Run, and automation; following the Next Generation Platform as a Service (NGPaaS) vision. Through the concept of Reusable Functional Blocks (RFBs), an enhancement to Virtual Network Functions, this methodology allows a VSP to deploy and manage platforms and services, agnostic to the underlying technologies, protocols, and APIs. To validate the proposed workflow, a use case is also presented herein, which illustrates both the deployment of the underlying platform by the Telco operator and of the services that run on top of it. In this use case, the NGPaaS operator facilitates a VSP to provide Virtual Network Function as a Service (VNFaaS) capabilities for its end customers.

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Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization for Service Providers using Network Slice AS a Service

International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology - Regular Issue ◽

10.35940/ijeat.a1394.129219 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 733-737

Keyword(s):

Service Providers ◽

Software Defined Networking ◽

Network Services ◽

Network Function Virtualization ◽

Use Case ◽

Service Networks ◽

Service Network ◽

Network Slicing ◽

Network Function ◽

Shared Network

The traditional network is configured based on the prescribed network requirements. Sometimes the resources of the network are underutilized and at sometimes there may resource starvation because of the static configuration of the network. As against traditional network, which is operated either as dedicated network or as an overlay network, network services can be operated over a shared network infrastructure. Thus maximum resource utilization under minimal infrastructure cost can be achieved. The on-demand network requirement can be configured dynamically using network slice. The backbone of the rapidly evolving 5G technology is network slice and service networks can be benefited from it. Different network function for multiple tenants can be enabled customized using network slice with each slice operating independently. Network slice can be offered as a service to meet various requirements from the network slice tenant with different granularities. The Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization are the enabling technologies for network slice. This paper discusses various network slicing use case requirements. And also OpenFlow based software defined network environment is simulated to validate the discussions. Experimental results show that the efficiency of the service network is maximized with improved reliability of service

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Path Mapping Approach for Network Function Virtualization Resource Allocation with Network Function Decomposition Support

Symmetry ◽

10.3390/sym11091173 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 1173 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Basheer Raddwan ◽

Khalil AL-Wagih ◽

Ibrahim A. Al-Baltah ◽

Mohamed A. Alrshah ◽

Mohammed A. Al-Maqri

Keyword(s):

Resource Allocation ◽

Execution Time ◽

Service Providers ◽

Virtual Network ◽

Network Function Virtualization ◽

Network Function ◽

Function Decomposition ◽

Mapping Approach ◽

Network Functions ◽

The Impact

Recently, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) have attracted many mobile operators. For the flexible deployment of Network Functions (NFs) in an NFV environment, NF decompositions and control/user plane separation have been introduced in the literature. That is to map traditional functions into their corresponding Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). This mapping requires the NFV Resource Allocation (NFV-RA) for multi-path service graphs with a high number of virtual nodes and links, which is a complex NP-hard problem that inherited its complexity from the Virtual Network Embedding (VNE). This paper proposes a new path mapping approach to solving the NFV-RA problem for decomposed Network Service Chains (NSCs). The proposed solution has symmetrically considered optimizing an average embedding cost with an enhancement on average execution time. The proposed approach has been compared to two other existing schemes using 6 and 16 scenarios of short and long simulation runs, respectively. The impact of the number of nodes, links and paths of the service requests on the proposed scheme has been studied by solving more than 122,000 service requests. The proposed Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and heuristic schemes have reduced the execution time up to 39.58% and 6.42% compared to existing ILP and heuristic schemes, respectively. Moreover, the proposed schemes have also reduced the average embedding cost and increased the profit for the service providers.

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Graph Neural Network-based Virtual Network Function Deployment Prediction

2020 16th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM) ◽

10.23919/cnsm50824.2020.9269085 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Hee-Gon Kim ◽

Suhyun Park ◽

Dongnyeong Heo ◽

Stanislav Lange ◽

Heeyoul Choi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Neural Network ◽

Virtual Network ◽

Network Function ◽

Virtual Network Function

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Efficient Placement of Service Function Chains in Cloud Computing Environments

Electronics ◽

10.3390/electronics10030323 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (3) ◽

pp. 323

Author(s):

Marwa A. Abdelaal ◽

Gamal A. Ebrahim ◽

Wagdy R. Anis

Keyword(s):

Energy Consumption ◽

Load Balancing ◽

Response Time ◽

Optimization Problem ◽

Service Providers ◽

Virtual Network ◽

Placement Problem ◽

Service Function ◽

Network Functions ◽

Bandwidth Consumption

The widespread adoption of network function virtualization (NFV) leads to providing network services through a chain of virtual network functions (VNFs). This architecture is called service function chain (SFC), which can be hosted on top of commodity servers and switches located at the cloud. Meanwhile, software-defined networking (SDN) can be utilized to manage VNFs to handle traffic flows through SFC. One of the most critical issues that needs to be addressed in NFV is VNF placement that optimizes physical link bandwidth consumption. Moreover, deploying SFCs enables service providers to consider different goals, such as minimizing the overall cost and service response time. In this paper, a novel approach for the VNF placement problem for SFCs, called virtual network functions and their replica placement (VNFRP), is introduced. It tries to achieve load balancing over the core links while considering multiple resource constraints. Hence, the VNF placement problem is first formulated as an integer linear programming (ILP) optimization problem, aiming to minimize link bandwidth consumption, energy consumption, and SFC placement cost. Then, a heuristic algorithm is proposed to find a near-optimal solution for this optimization problem. Simulation studies are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The simulation results show that VNFRP can significantly improve load balancing by 80% when the number of replicas is increased. Additionally, VNFRP provides more than a 54% reduction in network energy consumption. Furthermore, it can efficiently reduce the SFC placement cost by more than 67%. Moreover, with the advantages of a fast response time and rapid convergence, VNFRP can be considered as a scalable solution for large networking environments.

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