A Multi-Stage Graph Aided Algorithm for Distributed Service Function Chain Provisioning Across Multiple Domains

Network Service Providers (NSPs) envisage to support the divergent and stringent requirements of future services by instantiating these services as service chains, commonly referred to as Service Function Chains (SFCs), that are customized and configured to meet specific service requirements. However, due to the limited footprint of the Infrastructure Providers (InPs), these SFCs may have to transcend multiple InPs/domains. In this regard, determining the optimal set of InPs in which to embed the SFC request emerges as a complex problem for several reasons. First, the large number of possible combinations for selecting the InPs to embed the different sub-chains of the request makes this problem computationally complex, rendering optimal solutions only after long computations, especially in large scale networks, which is unfeasible for delay sensitive applications. Second, the unwillingness of InPs to disclose their internal information, which may be vital for making embedding decisions, usually implies the provisioning of single-domain solutions, which are unsuitable in this working scenario. In this regard, this paper first formulates the multi-domain service deployment problem under multiple request constraints, such as bandwidth or delay, among others. Then, due to the NP-hardness nature of the above problem, this paper proposes an algorithm that is aided by a multi-stage graph for computing a request embedding solution in a distributed manner, solving the problem in acceptable run-times. Results from different simulations reveal that the proposed algorithm is optimized in terms of acceptance ratio and embedding cost, with up to 60.0% and 88.7% improvements in terms of embedding cost and execution time, respectively, for some scenarios, in comparison with a benchmark state-of-the-art algorithm.