ONETS: Online Network Slice Broker From Theory to Practice

Virtualization and network slicing offer an unprecedented opportunity to mobile network operators: open their physical network infrastructure platform to the concurrent deployment of multiple logical self-contained networks, namely network slices. In this paper, we propose and analyze ONETS, an Online NETwork Slicing solution that i) builds on the budgeted lock-up multi-armed bandit mathematical model and properties, ii) derives its analytical bounds in our proposed extension for network slicing, iii) seamlessly integrates into the 3GPP architecture, iv) proves its feasibility through a proof-of-concept implementation on commercial hardware considering three network slices and v) allows for the design of a low-complexity online network slice brokering solution that maximizes multiplexing gains.