Horizontal-based orchestration for multi-domain SFC in SDN/NFV-enabled satellite/terrestrial networks

It's promising to use Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to integrate satellite and terrestrial networks. To construct network service function chains in such a multi-domain environment, we propose a horizontal-based Multi-domain Service Function Chaining (Md-SFC) orchestration framework. In this framework, multi-domain orchestrators can coordinate with each other to guarantee the end-to-end service quality. Intra-domain orchestrators also coordinate SDN controllers and NFV management components to implement intra-domain service function chains. Based on this, we further propose a heuristic SFC mapping algorithm with a cooperative inter-domain path calculation method to map service function chains to infrastructures. In this method, master multi-domain orchestrator and intra-domain orchestrators coordinate to select proper inter-domain links. We compare the cooperative method with a naive uncooperative way that domains' topology information is provided to the master multi-domain orchestrator and it calculates the shortest inter-domain path between intra-domain service function chains directly. Simulation results demonstrate that our solution is feasible. It is able to construct end-to-end performance guaranteed service function chain by horizontal-based cooperation. The cooperative inter-domain path calculation method decreases the mapping load for the master orchestrator and gets the same end-to-end performance.