A Flexible Service Function Chain Optimisation Scheme Based on Network Topology Clustering

Service Function Chaining (SFC) is an emerging network technology based on network function virtualisation (NFV), which facilitates in-network data processing during traffic steering. SFC optimisations can be broadly categorised into centralised and distributed solutions, each with advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, we propose a flexible SFC optimisation scheme based on network cluster partitioning, where cluster-based information sharing and decision-making are applied for building optimised SFCs in real-time. Such a scheme can be flexibly adapted based on cluster numbers and sizes. The key challenge is how necessary intra-cluster information is shared across clusters for performance optimisation while retaining privacy and low signalling complexity. According to our simulation experiments based on real network topologies, our proposed solution outperforms the state-of-the-art benchmark by about 20%.