Minimizing bottleneck nodes of a substrate in virtual network embedding

Network virtualization has been proposed as a way to increase the flexibility of the Internet. This could enable the provisioning of many desired services in the current architecture and allow effective sharing and use of resources. Providing virtual networks (VNs) means that virtual nodes and links need to be embedded in the underlying shared infrastructure. This embedding process, where VNs with resource demands are mapped onto a substrate with finite resources is a challenging and NP-hard problem. In this paper the focus is on mapping the VNs in such a way that node resources in the substrate are not completely exhausted. To achieve this objective, an approach referred to as bottleneck node reduced mapping is presented. This method is evaluated and compared with an approach, where resource exhaustion is not considered.