Rethinking Virtual Network Embedding: Substrate Support for Path Splitting and Migration
Report ID: TR-788-07Author: Yi, Yung / Yu, Minlan / Chiang, Mung / Rexford, Jennifer
Date: 2007-07-00
Pages: 9
Download Formats: |PDF|
Abstract:
Network virtualization is a powerful way to run multiple architectures or experiments simultaneously on a shared infrastructure. However, making efficient use of the underlying resources requires effective techniques for \emph{virtual network embedding}---mapping each virtual network to specific nodes and links in the substrate network. Since the general embedding problem is computationally intractable, past research has focused on two main approaches: (i) significantly restricting the problem space to allow efficient solutions or (ii) proposing heuristic algorithms that do not use the substrate resources efficiently. In this paper, we advocate a different approach: rethinking the design of the substrate network to enable simpler embedding algorithms and more efficient use of resources, without restricting the problem space. First, we allow the substrate network to split a virtual link over \emph{multiple} substrate paths. Second, we employ \emph{path migration} to periodically re-optimize the utilization of the substrate network to help accommodate new requests. In addition, we run node-mapping algorithms that are \emph{customized} to common classes of virtual-network topologies. Our simulation experiments show that path splitting, path migration, and customized embedding algorithms enable a substrate network to satisfy a much larger mix of virtual-network requests in practice.