Dynamic Network Function Provisioning to Enable Network in Box for Industrial Applications
Gang Sun, Xu Zhu, Hongfang Yu, Victor Chang
Abstract
Network function virtualization (NFV) in 6G can use standard virtualization techniques to enable network functions via software. Resource scheduling is one of the key research areas of NFV in 6G and is mainly used to deploy service function chains (SFCs) in substrate networks. However, determining how to utilize network resources efficiently has always been a difficult problem in SFC deployment. This article focuses on how to efficiently provision online SFC requests in NFV with 6G. We first establish a mathematical model for the problem of online SFC provisioning. Then, we propose an efficient online service function chain deployment (OSFCD) algorithm that selects the path to deploy that is close to the SFC length. Finally, we compare our proposed algorithm with three other existing algorithms by simulation experiments. The experimental results show that the OSFCD algorithm optimizes multiple performance indicators of online SFC deployment.