Joint Mapping and Routing of Virtual Network Functions for Improved Disaster Recovery Support

Network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) are two recent networking paradigms that strive to increase manageability, scalability, programmability and dynamism. The former decouples network functions and hosting devices, while the latter decouples the data and control planes. However, as more operators adopt these new paradigms, there is a growing need to address multi-failure conditions, particularly those arising from large-scale disaster events. Hence this study proposes enhanced “risk-aware” virtual function mapping and traffic routing schemes to improve the reliability of user services as well as reduce deployment and routing costs.