Ensuring Profit and QoS When Dynamically Embedding Delay-Constrained ICN and IP Slices for Content Delivery

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are becoming more critical due to the tremendous growth of video traffic. This paper proposes a complete framework targeting the creation of Information Centric Network (ICN) and IP slices for content delivery. Leveraging ICN's in-network caching advantages, our solution is tailored to a VNF placement context where ICN and IP slices are dynamically created over a physical infrastructure. Embedding delay-constrained slices with high profits requires adjustments of the available resources based on the traffic and slice demands, which leads to the reassigning of the slices. However, slice reassignment may lead to additional costs, content disruption in service delivery, and QoS violation. We formulate the problem as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and propose a cost-efficient dynamic network slicing heuristic. The objective is to maximize the profit of infrastructure providers while meeting the different QoS requirements of the slices. Our evaluation validates the effectiveness of profit maximization and analyzes the impact of QoS violation on infrastructure provider profit. The results are compared to a recent work from the literature and an optimal solution. The evaluation shows that our proposed heuristic is promising and offers a near-optimal solution while improving profitability and ensuring QoS.