Efficient planning of virtual network services

This paper addresses the issue of virtual network service provision, i.e. establishment of virtualized connectivity services over heterogeneous network infrastructures and argues that, besides the enabling transport and switching technologies, effective planning methods must also be studied so that such services can be provided on-demand, within reasonable provisioning times. In this context, the paper proposes a relatively simple and fast method for MPLS - particularly - and virtual network - generally - planning, able to map several demands over complex infrastructures within minutes. The proposed method is evaluated with regard not only to its response time, but also to the uniformity and balance of the traffic load distributed to the network.