Flexible network architecture and provisioning strategy for geographically distributed metro data centers

The fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) is expected to introduce new services with strict end-to-end delay requirements. For this reason, service providers and network operators are increasingly relying on geographically distributed metro data centers (DCs) to bring services closer to end-users and reduce delivery time. The metro DCs frequently exchange data for different purposes, such as backup and load balancing. Some of these data transfers require guaranteed low delays. Meanwhile, efficient use of network resources is necessary to limit the cost of the network infrastructure. To address these issues, in this paper, we propose a converged intra- and inter-DC network architecture and a dynamic provisioning strategy that are able to (i) efficiently support different classes of service, (ii) offer fast data transfers among metro DCs, and (iii) enable efficient utilization of network resources. Simulation results show that the proposed network architecture and provisioning strategy achieve at least two times faster average data transfer between DCs and better network resource utilization compared with conventional solutions. We also present a prototype and an extensive set of experimental results, thus proving the implementation feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach.