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Edge computing networks are critical infrastructures for processing massive data and providing instantaneous services. However, how to efficiently allocate resources in edge computing networks to meet the embedding requirements of service function chains has become an urgent problem. In this paper, we model the resource allocation problem in edge computing networks as a service function chain embedding problem model, aiming to optimize the resource allocation through reinforcement learning algorithms to achieve the goals of low cost, high revenue, and high embedding rate. In this paper, the basic concepts of edge computing network and service function chain are elaborated, and the resource allocation problem is transformed into a service function chain embedding problem by establishing a mathematical model, which provides a foundation for the subsequent algorithm design. In this paper, a service function chain embedding algorithm based on reinforcement learning is designed to gradually optimize the resource allocation decision by simulating the learning process. In order to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm, a series of simulation experiments are conducted in this paper and compared with other algorithms. The experimental results show that the service function chain embedding algorithm based on reinforcement learning proposed in this paper exhibits superior performance in resource allocation. Compared with traditional resource allocation methods, the algorithm achieves significant improvement in terms of low cost, high revenue, and high embedding rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zero-touch networks (ZTNs) can provide autonomous network solutions by integrating software-based solutions for various emerging 5G and 6G applications. The current literature does not provide any suitable end-to-end network management and resource-slicing solutions for service function chaining (SFC) and user intent-based (time and cost preference) 6G/non-6G application execution over ZTNs enabled by mobile edge computing, network function virtualization, and software-defined networking. To tackle these challenges, this work initiates an end-to-end network management and user intent-aware intelligent network resource-slicing scheme for SFC-based 6G/non-6G application execution over ZTNs, taking into account various virtual and physical resources, task workloads, service requirements, and task numbers. The results depicted that at least 25.27% average task implementation delay gain, 6.15% energy gain, and 11.52% service monetary gain are realized in the proposed scheme over the compared schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network functions virtualization (NFV) has become the platform for decomposing the sequence of virtual network functions (VNFs), which can be grouped as a forwarding graph of service function chaining (SFC) to serve multi-service slice requirements. NFV-enabled SFC consists of several challenges in reaching the reliability and efficiency of key performance indicators (KPIs) in management and orchestration (MANO) decision-making control. The problem of SFC fault tolerance is one of the most critical challenges for provisioning service requests, and it needs resource availability. In this article, we proposed graph neural network (GNN)-based deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to enhance SFC fault tolerance (GRL-SFT), which targets the chain graph representation, long-term approximation, and self-organizing service orchestration for future massive Internet of Everything applications. We formulate the problem as the Markov decision process (MDP). DRL seeks to maximize the cumulative rewards by maximizing the service request acceptance ratios and minimizing the average completion delays. The proposed model solves the VNF management problem in a short time and configures the node allocation reliably for real-time restoration. Our simulation result demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and indicates better performance in terms of total rewards, delays, acceptances, failures, and restoration ratios in different network topologies compared to reference schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zero-touch networks (ZTNs) can provide autonomous network solutions by integrating software-based solutions for various emerging 5G and 6G applications. The current literature does not provide any suitable end-to-end network management and resource-slicing solutions for service function chaining (SFC) and user intent–based (time and cost preference) 6G/non-6G application execution over ZTNs enabled by mobile edge computing, network function virtualization, and software-defined networking. To tackle these challenges, this work initiates an end-to-end network management and user intent–aware intelligent network resource–slicing scheme for SFC-based 6G/non-6G application execution over ZTNs, taking into account various virtual and physical resources, task workloads, service requirements, and task numbers. The results depicted that at least 25.27% average task implementation delay gain, 6.15% energy gain, and 11.52% service monetary gain are realized in the proposed scheme over the compared schemes.

The transition towards full network virtualization will see services for smart ecosystems including smart metering, healthcare and transportation among others, being deployed as Service Function Chains (SFCs) comprised of an ordered set of virtual network functions. However, since such services are usually deployed in remote cloud networks, the SFCs may transcend multiple domains belonging to different Infrastructure Providers (InPs), possibly with differing policies regarding billing and Quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. Therefore, efficiently allocating the exhaustible network resources to the different SFCs while meeting the stringent requirements of the services such as delay and QoS among others, remains a complex challenge, especially under limited information disclosure by the InPs. In this work, we formulate the SFC deployment problem across multiple domains focusing on delay constraints, and propose a framework for SFC orchestration which adheres to the privacy requirements of the InPs. Then, we propose a reinforcement learning (RL)-based algorithm for partitioning the SFC request across the different InPs while considering service reliability across the participating InPs. Such RL-based algorithms have the intelligence to infer undisclosed InP information from historical data obtained from past experiences. Simulation results, considering both online and offline scenarios, reveal that the proposed algorithm results in up to 10% improvement in terms of acceptance ratio and provisioning cost compared to the benchmark algorithms, with up to more than 90% saving in execution time for large networks. In addition, the paper proposes an enhancement to a state-of-the-art algorithm which results in up to 5% improvement in terms of provisioning cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network function virtualization (NFV) provides dynamic, energy-efficient, and cost-effective network services by segregating network services from expensive and energy-hungry hardware components. Traditional hardware-based network functions are always ON with 100% capacity, resulting in massive energy consumption. In contrast, NFV enables different network services (NS) through virtual network functions (VNFs), which can reduce energy consumption, by automatic ON/OFF (auto-scaling) of the VNFs depending on the traffic load. However, auto-scaling will introduce delays in the network service management process. This delay can be minimized by estimating future resource requirements accurately and taking proactive steps ahead of time. In this research, we propose the use of deep learning based forecasting algorithms to predict the required VNFs and virtual CPU for each VNF to complete a network service, often deployed as service function chain (SFC). We use long short term memory (LSTM), bidirectional-LSTM, and convolutional neural network (CNN) based algorithms to forecast resources from univariate and multivariate network traffic data. Experimental results show that CNN and bidirectional-LSTM-based forecasting models can forecast more accurately than the prior studies. Based on the forecasting models, we propose a resource allocation algorithm (DeepVRM) that can efficiently allocate resources to complete SFC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the core networking of smart cities, mobile network operators need solutions to reflect service function chaining (SFC) orchestration policies while ensuring efficient resource utilization and preserving quality of service (QoS) in large-scale networking congestion states. To offer this solution, we observe the standardized QoS class identifiers of smart city scenarios. Then, we reflect the service criticalities via cloning virtual network function (VNF) with reserved resources for ensuring effective scheduling of request queue management. We employ graph neural networks (GNN) with a message-passing mechanism to iteratively update hidden states of VNF nodes with the objectives of enhancing allocation of resource blocks, accurate detection of availability statuses, and duplication of heavily congested instances. The deployment properties of smart city use cases are presented along with their intelligent service functions, and we aim to activate a modular architecture with multi-purpose VNFs and chaining isolation for generalizing global instances. Experimental simulation is conducted to illustrate how the proposed scheme performs under different congestion levels of SFC request rates, while capturing the key performance metrics of average delay, acceptance ratios, and completion ratios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network function virtualization (NFV) has the potential to fundamentally transform conventional network architecture through the decoupling of software from dedicated hardware. The convergence of virtualization and cloud computing technologies has revolutionized the networking landscape, offering a wide range of advantages, including improved flexibility, manageability, and scalability. The importance of network capability in enabling ultra-low latency applications has been greatly amplified in the current era due to the increased demand for emerging services such as autonomous driving, teleoperated driving, virtual reality, and remote surgery. This paper presents a novel and efficient methodology for service function chaining (SFC) in an NFV-enabled network that aims to minimize latency and optimize the utilization of physical network resources, with a specific focus on ultra-low latency applications. In our proposed methodology, we offer flow prioritization and an adjustable priority coefficient factor (µ) to reserve a portion of physical network resources exclusively for ultra-low latency applications in order to optimize the deployment paths of these applications further. We formulate the SFC deployment problem as an integer linear programming (ILP) optimization model. Furthermore, we propose a set of heuristic algorithms that yield near-optimal solutions with minimal optimality gaps and execution times, making them practical for large-scale network topologies. Performance evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methodology in enabling ultra-low latency applications in an NFV-enabled network. Compared to existing algorithms, our proposed methodology achieves notable enhancements in terms of the end-to-end delay (up to 22 percent), bandwidth utilization (up to 28 percent), and SFC acceptance rate (up to 13 percent). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security service function chaining (SFC) based on software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) technology allows traffic to be forwarded sequentially among different security service functions to achieve a combination of security functions. Security SFC can be deployed according to requirements, but the current SFC is not flexible enough and lacks an effective feedback mechanism. The SFC is not traffic aware and the changes of traffic may cause the previously deployed security SFC to be invalid. How to establish a closed-loop mechanism to enhance the adaptive capability of the security SFC to malicious traffic has become an important issue. Our contribution is threefold. First, we propose a secure SFC path selection framework. The framework can accept the feedback results of traffic and security service functions in SFC, and dynamically select the optimal path for SFC based on the feedback results. It also realizes the automatic deployment of paths, forming a complete closed loop. Second, we expand the protocol of SFC to realize the security SFC with branching path, which improve flexibility of security SFC. Third, we propose a deep reinforcement learning-based dynamic path selection method for security SFC. It infers the optimal branching path by analyzing feedback from the security SFC. We have experimented with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack detection modules as security service functions. Experimental results show that our proposed method can dynamically select the optimal branching path for a security SFC based on traffic features and the state of the SFC. And it improves the accuracy of the overall malicious traffic detection of the security SFC and significantly reduces the latency and overall load of the SFC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fog computing computes and stores data locally based upon distributed architectures that extend cloud to the edge of the network. This enables fog paradigms to be suitable for delay‐sensitive applications that demand various network functions (NFs). These NFs here are provided using network function virtualization (NFV) to allow elastic NF deployment on the fog nodes, that is, virtual network functions (VNFs). Now a major challenge for NFV‐based fog architectures is the limited resources, which vulnerate them to premature saturation and load imbalance. Hence resource management schemes are necessary for fog networks, in particular load migration and redistribution. Along this, an efficient migration scheme is proposed here using the coordinated generalized pattern search (CGPS) heuristic method. The scheme migrates excess load from heavily‐loaded (HL) nodes to lightly‐loaded (LL) nodes in proximity. The scheme adopts two criteria, termed as exclusive and common use of VNF instances. Results show that the proposed scheme achieves high migration success at reduced delays, as well as alleviating resources with low migration frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, zero trust security has received notable attention in the security community. However, while many networks use monitoring and security functions like firewalls, their integration in the design of zero trust architectures remains largely unaddressed. In this article, we contribute with respect to this aspect a novel network security architecture called Zero Trust Service Function Chaining (ZTSFC). With ZTSFC, we achieve three main improvements over zero trust architectures: (1) the zero trust components can directly integrate other monitoring and security functions into their access decisions, (2) an efficient flow of information between zero trust components, monitoring, and security functions are achieved, and (3) ZTSFC improves the performance with respect to hardware load and user experience. As proof of concept, we implemented a publicly available ZTSFC prototype based on HTTPS and the policy language ALFA. Using this prototype, we demonstrate the achievement of all three improvements in representative use cases. In addition, our performance evaluation compares ZTSFC with a regular zero trust network without ZTSFC. The results indicate that ZTSFC can reduce CPU usage by 25% for specific monitoring and security functions in certain scenarios. Overall, we also observed a 30% decrease in the time it takes to access services with ZTSFC.

This paper addresses the challenge of managing service function chaining (SFC) in an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) IoT, a dynamic network that integrates UAVs and IoT devices for various scenarios. To enhance the service quality and user experience of the UAV IoT, network functions must be flexibly configured and adjusted based on varying service demands and network situations. This paper presents a model for calculating benefits and an agile algorithm for embedding and migrating SFC based on particle swarm optimization (PSO). The model takes into account multiple factors such as SFC quality, resource utilization, and migration cost. It aims to maximize the SFC benefit and minimize the migration times. The algorithm leverages PSO’s global search and fast convergence to identify the optimal or near-optimal SFC placement and update it when the network state changes. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed method improves network resource efficiency and outperforms existing methods. This paper presents a new idea and method for managing SFC in UAV IoT.

At present, most of the network security equipment between the production network and data center of coal mine enterprises are deployed in serial mode. This mode has the problems of single point of failure, link bottleneck, and operation and maintenance coupling. In order to solve the above problems, the network security service chain technology of data center in coal mine enterprise based on software defined network (SDN) is studied. The parallel deployment mode of the security equipment of the data center in coal mine enterprise is designed as follows. A service function chain (SFC) switch is connected in series on the physical topology. All security equipment is connected to the SFC switch. The SDN controller is used to control security equipment and flow through the SFC switch. The SFC switch regularly sends detection messages to the security equipment to detect the health status of the security equipment. According to the configuration, the SDN security service chain in the case of security equipment failure, upgrade or increase is realized. This chain ensures that the security equipment is not aware of online and offline. The test results show that the technology supports the visual and flexible scheduling of security service resources. The technology can enable/disable security services on service chains or configure service chains with different priorities according to needs. The technology can automatically update security service paths in the case of security equipment failure. The technology has low packet loss rate and realizes unaware switching.

In this paper we continue our study of path discovery process for Service Function Chaining (SFC) in Software Defined Network (SDN). By default, service function (SF) paths are established proactively - before data transmission takes place. We have argued that this constraint can be eliminated with the use of our proposed Reactive SF path discovery approach. Such SFs as network address translation (NAT) or stateful firewall (FW) are SF path’s symmetry dependent requiring a visit of both ingress and egress flows. Thus, we evaluated SF path discovery processes in Mininet emulation network. Outcome of this study is a comparison of proactive and reactive SF path discovery processes for both asymmetrical and symmetrical SF paths. It shows that even in symmetrical environment reactive SF path discovery has a higher probability of successful SF path detection.

In a harsh environment, function aggregation of air–ground integrated network service function chaining (SFC) deployment can easily cause network load imbalance, which affects the network security and reliability. In this study, a task-similarity-based virtual network function (VNF) aggregation scheme was proposed. It considered air–ground network resource consumption and load balance before SFC mapping. A model for selecting VNFs to be aggregated based on task similarity was built. The tasks were classified based on their similarity. Furthermore, the VNFs to be aggregated were selected within the class under the constraints of the underlying physical resources. Load balancing was achieved by adjusting the similarity threshold. Moreover, an SFC mapping selection scheme based on network resource awareness was used to obtain the most suitable physical nodes for single-chain and multi-chain mapping according to various attributes of physical network nodes. The simulation results indicated that the proposed scheme with a better load balance design outperformed existing works on VNF aggregation. We also demonstrated that the task-similarity-based scheme was resource-consumption efficient and effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provisioning reliable network services for mobile users in edge computing environments is the top priority of network service providers, as unreliable services will result in tremendous losses of revenues and customers. In this paper, we study a novel service reliability augmentation problem in a mobile edge computing (MEC) network, where mobile users request network services with service function chain (SFC) and reliability expectation requirements. To enhance the service reliability of user requests, it is a common practice to make use of redundant virtualized network function (VNF) instance placement in case the primary VNF instance fails. We aim to augment the service reliability of each admitted request to its specified reliability expectation, subject to computing capacity on each cloudlet. To this end, we first formulate a novel service reliability augmentation problem for each request with an SFC and a reliability expectation requirement, by augmenting its reliability through redundant VNF instance deployment. We then show that the problem is NP-hard, and provide an admission framework of user requests by placing primary VNF instances of network functions in the SFC to different cloudlets. We then deal with the service reliability augmentation problem of an admitted request under the assumption that all secondary VNF instances of each primary VNF instance must be placed into the cloudlets no more than $l$ l hops from the cloudlet of its primary VNF instance for a fixed $l$ l with $1\leq l \leq n-1$ 1 ≤ l ≤ n - 1 , where $n$ n is the number of cloudlets in the network, for which we formulate an integer linear program solution, and develop a randomized algorithm with a good approximation ratio and high probability, at the expense of moderate resource constraint violations. We also devise a deterministic heuristic for the problem without any resource violation. We third study the service reliability augmentation problem for a set of admitted requests by extending the proposed algorithm for the service reliability augmentation problem for a single request admission. We finally evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms through experimental simulations. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms are promising, and their empirical results are superior to their analytical counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) in various mission-critical applications generates service heterogeneity with different priority labels. A set of virtual network function (VNF) orders represents service function chaining (SFC) for a particular service to robustly execute in a network function virtualization (NFV)-enabled environment. In IoT networks, the configuration of adaptive SFC has emerged to ensure optimality and elasticity of resource expenditure. In this paper, priority-aware resource management for adaptive SFC is provided by modeling the configuration of real-time IoT service requests. The problem models of the primary features that impact the optimization of configuration times and resource utilization are studied. The proposed approaches query the promising embedded deep reinforcement learning engine in the management layer (e.g., orchestrator) to observe the state features of VNFs, apply the action on instantiating and modifying new/created VNFs, and evaluate the average transmission delays for end-to-end IoT services. In the embedded SFC procedures, the agent formulates the function approximator for scoring the existing chain performance metrics. The testbed simulation was conducted in SDN/NFV topologies and captured the average of rewards, delays, delivery ratio, and throughput as −48.6666, 10.9766 ms, 99.9221%, and 615.8441 Mbps, which outperformed other reference approaches, following parameter configuration in this environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network function virtualization (NFV) utilizes IT virtualization technology to realize the functions of various network devices and realize the decoupling of hardware and software functions. Typically, a service request specifies the virtual network functions (VNFs) it needs and the order between them. A network flow needs to traverse a set of sequential VNFs called a service function chain (SFC). Although SFC can increase the flexibility of service orchestration to meet the needs of different users, network providers face many challenges due to the need to ensure service reliability and some constraints. Therefore, how orchestrating SFC and designing a suitable network architecture is a critical issue in this field at present. We propose an efficient network layer-based SFC orchestration method, called SFC-hierarchical orchestration (SFC-HO). Our method separates virtual and physical networks into layers and computes the availability of resources in each layer. We filter the VNFs of each layer and deploy them to the physical layer that meets the greatest benefit. To this end, we formulate the problem as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem to minimize the total deployment cost. In order to further optimize the layering strategy, we innovatively use the Benders decomposition method to decompose the SFC-HO problem into two sub-problems, which are the hierarchical mapping problem of VNFs and the routing problem between nodes. We propose two algorithms for the two problems respectively. The simulation results show that compared with the SFC orchestration process in the traditional network model. Our research can effectively improve the reliability of the SFC, reduce the delay of the routing process, and effectively reduce the cost consumption. Our research effectively solves the problem of difficult service orchestration for operators in the face of diverse service demands and a large number of service requests.

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has been identified to revamp the provisioning of next-generation network services. This new paradigm allows cloud and network/service providers to compose their network services, also known as service function chains (SFCs), in an agile way since the software of the network function is decoupled from the legacy hardware. To reap the benefits of this new technology, there is a need for novel mechanisms that help cloud and network/service providers deploy the increasingly complex virtual network services seamlessly, efficiently, and in a time-efficient way. Existing state-of-the-art techniques often rely on the Integer Linear Programming framework, heuristics/metaheuristics, and greedy methods to deploy the services function chains. However, these techniques although reasonable and acceptable, still suffer from several key limitations: convergence time and scalability. To this end, we propose RAFALE, a suite of solution techniques, to tame this complexity by leveraging the concept of similarity from machine learning and skip-gram modeling framework. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to tackle these key limitations and propose a suite of solutions to them. RAFALE, a novel approach proposed to find the similarity between the new incoming virtual network service request and all the already-deployed services to learn from the previous experience of deploying techniques and use the same or close similar provisioning techniques. RAFALE is the first and the only method that develops the idea of detecting the similarity between virtual network services. Experimental results show that RAFALE reduces greatly the convergence time needed for provisioning virtual network services and can scale to 100 virtual network functions per virtual network service compared to the state-of-the-art. The Experimental results prove that RAFALE accomplished the NFV promises; decreasing the time and complexity of managing and deploying the virtual services, and providing a solution that is agile, faster, and scalable to deploy the new service requests by skipping one or more service provisioning steps (i.e., detecting and resolving the conflicts among policies, placement, and chaining) while satisfying the validated NFV policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network virtualization techniques are promising to overcome the obstacle of applying and expanding costly traditional networks in the industrial Internet of things (IIoT). Artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced distributed resource management in edge networks has aroused researchers’ widespread attention. However, dynamically arrived service requests and limited edge resources complicate the service scheduling issue. In this article, we establish a dynamic network virtualization technique enabled service function chain (SFC) orchestration framework in IIoT, formulate the joint optimization problem to maximize total utility and decompose it into two subproblems, i.e., SFC selection and dynamic SFC orchestration. A dynamic orchestration of SFC (DOS) scheme, consisting of resource-aware matching algorithm and averaged multistep double deep q-network algorithm, is designed to embed SFC requests distributedly on the optimal virtualized network function chains. At last, we validate the superiority of our proposed DOS scheme by experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fault-Prone Mobile Edge Cloud (FP-MEC) is a new type of distributed network composed of mobile edge computing and network function virtualization, where virtual network services can be provided in the form of service function chains (SFCs) that are a sequence of virtual network functions (VNFs) on-demand deployed on resource-limited edge servers. FP-MEC has a characteristic that the fault probability of each VNF is dynamic and fluctuates with time and workloads, making SFCs temporarily unreliable. To increase the reliabilities, redundant Backup VNFs (BVNFs) need to be deployed near the VNFs and activated when they experience faults. Different mobile users would request different SFCs with reliability and service time demands to process their data. However, workloads of VNFs are dynamic and unpredictable in FP-MEC due to random arrival of user requests. How to optimally deploy VNFs and corresponding BVNFs on a set of edge servers to form expected SFCs that have higher reliabilities than user demand values, meanwhile throughput of receiving requests is maximized while receiving cost is minimized in real-time, is a challenging problem. The receiving cost is composed of deployment cost of instantiating VNFs and BVNFs, and communication cost of routing data among users, VNFs and BVNFs. In this paper, the long-term provisioning problem is first formulated as an integer linear program and proved to be NP-hard. Then, it is discretized into a sequence of one-slot optimization problems to handle practical time-varying fault probability, where a set of SFC requests are given at each time slot, and receiving or rejecting decisions are executed immediately without any future information. Finally, an online approximation scheme with a constant approximation ratio is proposed to solve the one-slot problems in polynomial time. Theoretical analyses and experiments based on real network topology of CERNET in China demonstrate that the scheme is promising compared to existing works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Realizing Service Function Chaining with a micro-service-based architecture results in an increased number of computationally cheap Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). Pinning cheap VNFs to dedicated CPU cores can waste resources since not every VNF fully utilizes its core. Thus, cheap VNFs should share CPU cores to improve resource utilization. However, sharing cores can result in degraded performance due to interference between VNFs, even in mildly loaded scenarios. We propose D2A, a system that combines Neural Combinatorial Optimization, Machine Learning (ML)-based Digital Twins (DTs), and Game Theory to optimize VNF assignments. Measurements in a testbed show that D2A increases throughput by up to 46% and reduces latency by up to 93%, compared to three baseline algorithms. Using an ML-based DT to model VNF interference increases throughput by up to 11%, and reduces latency by up to 90% compared to an analytical model of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging 5G technologies can significantly reduce end-to-end service latency for applications requiring strict quality of service (QoS). With network function virtualization (NFV), to complete a client’s request from those applications, the client’s data can sequentially go through multiple service functions (SFs) for processing/analysis but introduce additional processing delay. To reduce the processing delay from the serially-running SFs, network function parallelism (NFP) that allows multiple SFs to run in parallel is introduced. In this work, we study how to apply NFP into the SF chaining and embedding process such that the latency, including processing and propagation delays, can be jointly minimized. We introduce a novel augmented graph to address the parallel relationship constraint among the required SFs. Considering parallel relationship constraints, we propose a novel problem called parallelism-aware service function chaining and embedding (PSFCE). For this problem, we propose a near-optimal maximum parallel block gain (MPBG) first optimization algorithm when computing resources at each physical node are enough to host the required SFs. When computing resources are limited, we propose a logarithm-approximate algorithm, called parallelism-aware SFs deployment (PSFD), to jointly optimize processing and propagation delays. We conduct extensive simulations on multiple network scenarios to evaluate the performances of our schemes. Accordingly, we find that (i) MPBG is near-optimal, (ii) the optimization of end-to-end service latency largely depends on the processing delay in small networks and is impacted more by the propagation delay in large networks, and (iii) PSFD outperforms the schemes directly extended from existing works regarding end-to-end latency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter presents a novel provisioning scheme for service function chain (SFC) requests for delay-sensitive applications. The SFC is comprised of virtual network functions (VNF) to be mapped on a multi-tier fog architecture composed of primary and secondary nodes with limited resources. Now existing provisioning methods establish service paths based on least delay or load, and then map single VNFs on each fog node. However, these approaches can yield early congestion at the primary nodes, thus leaving secondary nodes unoccupied due longer link delays. To solve this problem, the proposed scheme leverages a descending hierarchical approach to enhance admission and utilization rates and reduce provisioning delays. At low traffic volumes, it performs grouped VNF mapping on secondary nodes through shorter paths that skip underloaded primary nodes. At high traffic volumes, it performs single mapping on primary nodes over established paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network function virtualization (NFV) provides cost-effective network service by means of service function chain (SFC) for users. Meanwhile, billions of terminals are connected to the Internet (Internet of Things), and the vast variability of bandwidth requirements of SFC requests from heterogeneous terminals poses challenges to the network management, then neither only electronic networks nor only optical networks can provide highly efficient transmissions for network services. In this paper, a hybrid optical-electronic network paradigm is considered to provide connection services for SFC requests to benefit from the large bandwidth of optical networks and the flexibility of electronic networks. A profit-based utility function is established, and a mathematical formulation of the SFC embedding problem with the $log$ - $sum$ - $exp$ approximation is provided. An approach based on Markov chain modeling is used to adaptively embed SFC requests with the aim to maximize the utility function. Simulation results demonstrate the quality and adaptivity of the proposed approach in terms of the utility function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Network function virtualization (NFV) technologies are being rapidly adopted across many enterprise and service provider networks to help replace costly, proprietary hardware systems. This paradigm runs virtual “softwarized” networking functions on low-cost off-the-shelf servers and can be used to construct highly-customized service function chains (SFC) for clients. NFV also offers many advantages at the network edge, and hence newer studies have started to look at SFC deployment in specialized fog computing domains, i.e., to support clients with stringent delay and localized contextual service needs. As these trends accelerate, there is a growing need to further address service survivability in these settings, particularly for clients with stringent/rapid failure recovery requirements. Hence this paper presents novel “on-demand” heuristic solutions and batch sorting methodologies for SFC service mapping and protection in fog domains. These schemes take into account key end-user client and operator concerns, including service delay, bandwidth, and node/link resource parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a sub-chain-enabled coordinated protection model for the availability-guaranteed service function chain (SFC) provisioning, which considers the availability of each component to constitute an SFC, including links and VNFs. Unlike conventional protection models providing certain protection for the whole chain, the proposed model configures sub-chains for each SFC and provides proper protection for each sub-chain to achieve the required availability in a cost efficient way. We formulate the proposed model as an optimization problem to minimize the deployment cost. A game approach is presented to tackle the problem. The numerical results show that the proposed model outperforms the conventional ones in terms of deployment cost; the game approach has scalability of tackling the proposed model as the problem size increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Service Function Chaining (SFC) together enable flexible and agile network management and traffic engineering. Recently, Network Function Parallelism (NFP) has been proposed to break the need for sequential services and, hence, significantly reduce the latency of SFC. While some studies have investigated how to identify parallel paths to enhance the efficiency of parallelism, less effort has been paid to efficient network function embedding with consideration of parallelism opportunities. Hence, this work aims at solving the instance deployment problem so as to prevent parallel functions from waiting for each other before continuing to the next stage. As it is extremely difficult to optimize VNF (Virtual Network Functions) embedding for uncertain parallelism opportunities, we propose a practical embedding scoring mechanism to enhance the likelihood of low-cost function parallelism. Our scoring design tends to cluster independent functions for efficient parallelism while ensuring load balancing. After instance deployment, we then assign function instances to parallel chains so as to minimize their end-to-end latency while balancing the workload of instances. Our evaluation results show that the proposed scoringbased embedding scheme ensures homogeneous delays of parallel functions and, hence, reduces the end-to-end latency for NFP by up to 22% as compared to the embedding algorithm without considering parallelism opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the maximum flow routing strategy with the service function chain (SFC) constraints in the space information networks (SINs), where a SFC consists of a specific ordered sequence of service functions, and the mission flow must go through these functions in a predefined order. The time-varying SIN is modeled by the time-expanded graph (TEG). We formulate the maximum flow routing strategy problem with the SFC constraints as a linear programming (LP) problem. Furthermore, for a large-scale SIN, as the complexity of solving the LP problem is still very high, we propose a novel low-complexity SFC-constrained graph theory based (SFC-GT) algorithm. Specifically, we formulate this problem as one special single commodity maximum flow problem, where this flow must satisfy the SFC constraints. We first define the SFC-constrained residual network and the SFC-constrained augmenting path. Afterwards, we iteratively search the SFC-constrained augmenting path and update the SFC-constrained residual network. Simulation results demonstrate our proposed SFC-GT algorithm can achieve near-optimal performance with much less complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animal husbandry is the pillar industry in some ethnic areas of China. However, the communication/networking infrastructure in these areas is often underdeveloped, thus the difficulty in centralized management, and challenges for the effective monitoring. Considering the dynamics of the field monitoring environment, as well as the diversity and mobility of monitoring targets, traditional WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) or IoT (Internet of Things) is difficult to meet the surveillance needs. Mobile surveillance that features the collaboration of various functions (camera, sensing, image recognition, etc.) deployed on mobile devices is desirable in a volatile wireless environment. This paper proposes the service function chaining for mobile surveillance of animal husbandry, which orchestrates multi-path multifunction (MPMF) chains to help mobile devices to collaborate in complex surveillance tasks, provide backup chains in case the primary service function chain fails due to mobility, signal strength, obstacle, etc., and make up for the defects of difficult deployment of monitoring facilities in ethnic areas. MPMF algorithmmodels both mobile devices and various functions deployed on them as abstract graph nodes, so that chains that are required to traverse various functions and hosting mobile devices can be orchestrated in a single graphbased query through modified and adapted Dijkstra-like algorithms, with their cost ordered automatically. Experiment results show that the proposed MPMF algorithm finds multiple least-costly chains that traverse demanded functions in a timely fashion on Raspberry Pi-equipped mobile devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud computing is now known as the most cost-effective platform for delivering big data and artificial intelligence services over the Internet to enterprises and cloud consumers. However, despite many recent security developments, many cloud consumers continue to express great concern about using these platforms because they still have significant vulnerabilities. Typically, Economic Denial of Sustainability (EDoS) attacks exploit the pay-as-you-go billing mechanisms used by cloud service providers, so that a cloud customer is forced to pay an extra fee for the additional resources triggered by the attack activities. In our previous work, we already proposed an system to mitigate such EDoS attacks. Overall, this previous work presented an effective system for detecting abnormal events; however, the false-alarm rates still remain relatively high and detection rates are low, because abnormal events could be caused by the cloud customer. Furthermore, our previous work still consumes a large number of computing resources. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an enhanced scheme to detect and mitigate EDoS attacks efficiently and reliably. Our proposed scheme is composed of online and offline phases, implementing a gated recurrent unit, which not only can capture complex temporal dependence relations in the data, but also can reduce the vanishing gradient problems in time series. First, to reflect the normal patterns, our proposed scheme learns accurate representations of multivariate time series. Next, these representations are used to reconstruct input data. Finally, the reconstruction probabilities not only can be used to find anomalies, but also can provide interpretations. The proposed scheme also introduces a self-adjusting threshold to reduce error rates, whereas existing solutions normally use a hard threshold to analyze the anomalies, which causes increasing error rates. Our comprehensive analysis of the results shows outstanding performance compared to other solutions and our previous work.

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is an approach that provides a network service provider with agility and cost-efficiency in managing 6G network services. Standard traffic engineering rules are known limited in assuring a very stringent delay requirement in NFV when a traffic flow is required to follow a sequence of network functions scattered in data center networks. This paper proposes an innovative model and algorithm of traffic engineering for service function chaining (SFC) to maximize cost-efficiency under a delay-guarantee constraint. We first formulate the problem as a mixed-integer linear programming model for obtaining the optimal solution. We then propose an algorithm based on the reinforcement learning principles for finding an approximation solution in a large-scale problem with the dynamics of service demands. Numerical results under both real-world datasets and synthetic network topologies demonstrate that our proposed model and algorithm allow an NFV service provider (NSP) to place a virtual network function and steer a traffic flow efficiently in terms of energy cost for a delay-guarantee SFC. Importantly, the results provide an insight into the optimal and approximation solutions for an NSP to select a suitable traffic engineering approach with regard to network dynamics.

This paper investigates a multi-service activation procedure for telecommunications carriers’ zero-touch provisioning workflows using access network virtualization technologies in an optical access network. We examine a procedure in which one network function or a set of functions is initiated depending on the services to be activated after a line is automatically opened in response to a customer’s action. The feasibility of this procedure is experimentally verified in a joint testbed environment between three Asia-Pacific telecommunications carriers. The results showed that even when 32 customers simultaneously request service activation, it takes less than 30 seconds for all of the customers’ requests to be completed. In addition, we discuss potential implementations for activating various multi-service provisioning in response to customer requirements and network isolation in terms of virtualized resources and infrastructure. We also propose an implementation that utilizes network resources shared by various services more efficiently than that presented in our previous conference report, and we experimentally verify its feasibility. In addition, the experimental configurations briefly described in the previous report are described in detail in this paper.

Service function chaining (SFC) is an indispensable technique for Internet service providers to efficiently manage their networks. However, SFC poses requirements of additional processing time of service functions (SFs) and increased routing time owing to detoured paths. In this paper, we introduce the use of a programmable data plane (PDP) to reduce the additional processing and routing times in SFC. We first classify the existing PDP-empowered SFC schemes and analyze their pros and cons. An optimization problem, to find the optimal SF embedding strategy minimizing the SFC completion time while efficiently utilizing the PDP switch resources, is formulated and a flow-aware SF embedding (FASE) algorithm that complementarily combines the redundant SF and re-circulation approaches is devised. FASE is implemented over a commercial PDP switch and experimental results demonstrate that FASE can reduce the SFC completion time by up to 33% compared with conventional approaches while utilizing the switch resources efficiently.

Network Service Providers (NSPs) envisage to support the divergent and stringent requirements of future services by instantiating these services as service chains, commonly referred to as Service Function Chains (SFCs), that are customized and configured to meet specific service requirements. However, due to the limited footprint of the Infrastructure Providers (InPs), these SFCs may have to transcend multiple InPs/domains. In this regard, determining the optimal set of InPs in which to embed the SFC request emerges as a complex problem for several reasons. First, the large number of possible combinations for selecting the InPs to embed the different sub-chains of the request makes this problem computationally complex, rendering optimal solutions only after long computations, especially in large scale networks, which is unfeasible for delay sensitive applications. Second, the unwillingness of InPs to disclose their internal information, which may be vital for making embedding decisions, usually implies the provisioning of single-domain solutions, which are unsuitable in this working scenario. In this regard, this paper first formulates the multi-domain service deployment problem under multiple request constraints, such as bandwidth or delay, among others. Then, due to the NP-hardness nature of the above problem, this paper proposes an algorithm that is aided by a multi-stage graph for computing a request embedding solution in a distributed manner, solving the problem in acceptable run-times. Results from different simulations reveal that the proposed algorithm is optimized in terms of acceptance ratio and embedding cost, with up to 60.0% and 88.7% improvements in terms of embedding cost and execution time, respectively, for some scenarios, in comparison with a benchmark state-of-the-art algorithm.

In a harsh environment, function aggregation of air–ground integrated network service function chaining (SFC) deployment can easily cause network load imbalance, which affects the network security and reliability. In this study, a task-similarity-based virtual network function (VNF) aggregation scheme was proposed. It considered air–ground network resource consumption and load balance before SFC mapping. A model for selecting VNFs to be aggregated based on task similarity was built. The tasks were classified based on their similarity. Furthermore, the VNFs to be aggregated were selected within the class under the constraints of the underlying physical resources. Load balancing was achieved by adjusting the similarity threshold. Moreover, an SFC mapping selection scheme based on network resource awareness was used to obtain the most suitable physical nodes for single-chain and multi-chain mapping according to various attributes of physical network nodes. The simulation results indicated that the proposed scheme with a better load balance design outperformed existing works on VNF aggregation. We also demonstrated that the task-similarity-based scheme was resource-consumption efficient and effective.

Current Service Function Chaining (SFC) architectures are tailor-made for specific environments and platforms, often relying on SFC support on network devices or specialized frameworks. Thus, the service plane and the data plane are tightly coupled, which hinders innovation. For example, prototyping new SFC protocols usually requires re-implementing service functions (SFs) or modifying network devices. To address these issues, we propose Chaining-Box, a new SFC architecture based on a simple idea: implementing all the SFC functionality as a sequence of stages. This is done in a fully transparent manner without changing neither SFs nor network devices. Stages are implemented using BPF, a technology that allows user-defined programs to run inside the Linux kernel. The stages run as packets traverse the kernel stack and implement all SFC actions to provide the chaining. A proof-of-concept of Chaining-Box is implemented as a prototype, which demonstrates a decrease of 20%-40% in latency in comparison with similar proposals. The results also show equivalent performance when compared with OVS-based SFC, but allowing the bridges to be SFC-agnostic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of the Internet of Things, trust has become a limited factor in the integration of heterogeneous IoT networks. In this regard, we use the combination of blockchain technology and SDN/NFV to build a heterogeneous IoT network resource management model based on the consortium chain. In order to solve the efficiency problem caused by the full amount of data on the chain, we deploy light nodes and full nodes for the consortium chain. At the same time, we use the idea of identification to realize the separation of identification and resource information, build the application mode of on-chain identification and off-chain information, and realize resources endogenous trust management. We also propose a practical Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus mechanism based on reputation value to save consensus costs and improve efficiency. Combined with artificial intelligence technology, we introduce deep reinforcement learning for service function chain orchestration, and design a service function chain orchestration algorithm based on Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic to optimize orchestration costs. The final simulation results show that the consensus algorithm and service function chain orchestration algorithm we designed have good performance in terms of cost saving and efficiency improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network function virtualization (NFV) is a key networking concept whose benefits include scalability, flexibility, and cost-effective service provisioning. In NFV, service function chains (SFCs) adaptable to customers' needs are created by chaining virtualized network functions (VNFs). VNFs and SFCs are sensitive elements that, if compromised, would affect network security. The detection of compromised VNFs and SFCs is imperative, and although anomaly detection can be used in such a context, there is a lack of research work on the use of anomaly detection in NFV. In this article, we exploit the use of anomaly detection mechanisms to identify suspicious VNFs and SFCs. We introduce, into a widely accepted NFV architecture, an NFV security module (NSM) that, by analyzing VNFs and SFCs' operations, detects anomalies possibly resulting from security attacks. To prove the concept, three mechanisms have been implemented and deployed in NSM to observe how anomaly detection performs, given quantitative and qualitative information. We found out that anomaly detection is effective for VNF and SFC security and, in the case of using entropy as anomaly detection technique, it presents accuracy of up to 98 percent without harming NFV environment operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Service function chaining (SFC) creates a requested orchestration for composition and placement of several service functions. One of the most critical issues for the service function providers is achieving the highest quality of service. We consider the problem of optimal Service Function composition and placement in an SFC‐enabled network with the aim of achieving maximum Quality of Service (QoS). To this end, a method of merging the composition, routing, and placement phases is introduced. A genetic algorithm is designed to find the service chain instance with the maximum QoS using grammar‐based Genetic Algorithm (GA) operators. This grammar is provided to filter invalid service compositions based on the data center, security, and mobile scenarios defined by Internet engineering task force. A chromosome in the proposed genetic algorithm corresponds to a service chain instance that matches the proposed grammar. For routing, strongly connected components (SCCs) are extracted to reduce search time in the network. Consequently, the search space is reduced for requests whose start and end nodes are placed in a SCC. Besides, the Floyd Warshall algorithm is used for routing between consecutive services. According to the results, the proposed method outperformed other methods in terms of the number of responded requests, runtime, and cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has been emerging as an appealing solution that transforms from dedicated hardware implementations to software instances running in a virtualized environment. In NFV, the requested service is implemented by a sequence of Virtual Network Functions (VNF) that can run on generic servers by leveraging the virtualization technology. These VNFs are pitched with a predefined order, and it is also known as the Service Function Chaining (SFC). Considering that the delay and resiliency are two important Service Level Agreements (SLA) in a NFV service, in this paper, we first investigate how to quantitatively model the traversing delay of a flow in both totally ordered and partially ordered SFCs. Subsequently, we study how to calculate the VNF placement availability mathematically for both unprotected and protected SFCs. After that, we study the delay-sensitive Virtual Network Function placement and routing problem with and without resiliency concerns. We prove that this problem is NP-hard under two cases. We subsequently propose an exact Integer Nonlinear Programming (INLP) formulation and an efficient heuristic for this problem in each case. Finally, we evaluate the proposed algorithms in terms of acceptance ratio, average number of used nodes and total running time via extensive simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief, the service function chain (SFC) routing in network function virtualization (NFV) with server capacity limitation and user minimum target rate constraint is investigated simultaneously. After relaxing the constraints by the addition of extra cost terms, an extended NFV game incorporating the coupled constraints is formulated. By using semi-tensor product of matrices, we prove that the formulated game is a potential game which possesses at least one Nash equilibrium. We then present the equilibrium point algorithm for solving the SFC routes problem. The numerical simulation of two cases with constraints and without constraints illustrates the influence of coupled limitations on the SFC routing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Service Function Chains (SFCs) placement problem is crucial to support services flexibly and use resources efficiently. Solutions should satisfy various Quality of Service requirements, avoid edge resource congestion, and improve service acceptance ratio (SAR). This work presents a novel approach to address these challenges by solving a multi-objective SFCs placement problem based on the Pointer Network in multi-layer edge and cloud networks. We design a Deep Reinforcement Learning algorithm, called Chebyshev-assisted Actor-Critic SFCs Placement Algorithm, to overcome the limitations of traditional heuristic and evolutionary algorithms. Then, we run this algorithm iteratively with a set of weights to obtain non-dominated fronts, which have much higher hypervolume values than those obtained from other state-of-the-art algorithms. Moreover, running our algorithm individually with selected weights from non-dominated fronts can avoid edge resource congestion and achieve 98% SARs of low-latency services during high-workload periods. Finally, based on both simulation and real testbed experimental results, it is validated that the proposed algorithm fits for pragmatic service deployment while achieving 100% of SARs in the use cases deployed on the testbed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]