On Using Physical Programming for Multi-Domain SFC Placement With Limited Visibility

Service Function Chaining (SFC) is a networking concept by which traffic is steered through a set of ordered functions composing an end-to-end service. It represents one of the facilitating technologies for 5G, and is enabled by the Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networks (SDN) paradigms. In the multi-domain context, SFC placement faces new challenges related to the lack of visibility on the local domain's networks. Indeed, the domain operators are often reluctant to unveil details on their topology to external parties. Furthermore, the new 5G use cases introduce new requirements for services such as end-to-end latency, and a minimal guaranteed bandwidth that the placement process needs to optimize simultaneously. In this article, we propose a centralized framework that allows SFC partitioning and embedding over multiple domains with a limited visibility over the global infrastructure. We model the multi-objective SFC placement problem using the Physical Programming method, which allows the expression of the Decision Maker's preferences through meaningful parameters, and propose an exact algorithm as well as a scalable heuristic solution. We then perform an extensive evaluation of the framework as well as the proposed algorithms. The results demonstrate our solution's effectiveness with a limited visibility on the network.