Hybrid Service Chain Deployment in Networks with Unique Function

In Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Service Function Chain (SFC) is composed of Virtual Network Function (VNF) nodes that are chained via VNF links. SFCs can be specified as unidirectional or bidirectional. A unidirectional SFC (u-SFC) demands the traffic being forwarded via the VNFs in one direction, while a bidirectional SFC (b-SFC) requires bidirectional traffic flows. In this paper, for the first time, we investigate the problem of how to efficiently deploy a hybrid SFC (h-SFC), whereas some VNF nodes are required to process bidirectional traffic while others only handle unidirectional traffic. We define a new problem called hybrid SFC Deployment (h-SFCD). When each substrate node provides one unique VNF, we prove the NP-hardness of the h-SFCD problem and propose an approximate algorithm, namely, 2-approximation Hybrid Service function chain Deployment in Unique function networks (2-HSD-U). Our experimental results show that the proposed 2-HSD-U algorithm significantly outperforms the heuristic algorithm based on the traditional Nearest-Neighbor technique.