Optimal VNF Placement and Traffic Steering using Column Generation

Gupta, D and Kuri, J (2020) Optimal VNF Placement and Traffic Steering using Column Generation. In: 9th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Networking, CloudNet 2020, 9-11 Nov 2020, Piscataway; United States.

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Abstract

VNF placement and traffic steering have received considerable attention in the literature, ever since business pressures started driving telecom operators to embrace virtualization technologies instead of continuing with the expensive 'dedicated hardware and appliance' approach. However, most proposed solutions are not exact. When the formulated problem results in an Integer Linear Program (ILP) or a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP), the focus shifts to searching for heuristics. We show that using the Column Generation (CG) technique, exact solutions can be obtained quickly. The CG approach can be used to solve problems in both offline and online scenarios. For the aggregate bandwidth minimization problem, the exact solution provided by CG improves significantly upon 'DP-COA', a recently proposed heuristic. However, aggregate bandwidth minimization can lead to highly uneven link loading. Motivated by this, we formulate another problem in which the objective is to minimize the maximum link bandwidth consumed over all links in the network. This problem is also solved exactly using CG. Results indicate that this approach can help achieve balanced traffic demand placement. © 2020 IEEE.

Item Type:	Conference Paper
Publication:	Proceedings - 2020 IEEE 9th International Conference on Cloud Networking, CloudNet 2020
Publisher:	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Additional Information:	The copyright of this article belongs to Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Keywords:	Aggregates; Bandwidth, Bandwidth minimization; Bandwidth minimization problem; Dedicated hardware; Formulated problems; Integer linear programs; Mixed integer linear program; Telecom operators; Virtualization technologies, Integer programming
Department/Centre:	Division of Electrical Sciences > Electronic Systems Engineering (Formerly Centre for Electronic Design & Technology)
Date Deposited:	09 Mar 2021 08:28
Last Modified:	09 Mar 2021 08:28
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/68131

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