It's Good to Relax: Fast Profit Approximation for Virtual Networks with Latency Constraints

This paper proposes a new approximation algorithm for the offline Virtual Network Embedding Problem (VNEP) with latency constraints. Our approximation algorithm Flex allows for (slight) violations of the latency constraints in order to greatly lower the runtime. It relies on a reduction to the Restricted Shortest Path Problem (RSP) and leverages a classic result by Goel et al. We complement our formal analysis with a simulation study demonstrating our algorithm's computational benefits. Our results generalize to any other additive edge metric, as e.g., hop count or even packet loss probability.