One of the main challenges for service providers when they try to deploy Network Function Virtualization based networks is to efficiently make use of substrate network resources to facilitate the design, delivery and operation of network services in a dynamic and scalable manner. This challenge is known as Network Function Virtualization Resource Allocation, which can be addressed in two stages called Service Function Chain Composition and Service Function Chain Embedding. The main objective of the first stage is to compose an optimized chain of Virtual Network Functions, which offers a complete network service. The second stage is responsible for the embedding of such network service onto a physical infrastructure based on virtualization technologies. In this paper, we propose a metaheuristic algorithm to face the scalability challenges of exact approaches, when solving the composition stage. The performance of our metaheuristic approach shows that large, complex and heterogeneous service requests can be processed in reasonable running times, finding better results compared with existing heuristics in the state of the art.

中文翻译：

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NFV 中服务功能链组成的禁忌搜索


当服务提供商尝试部署基于网络功能虚拟化的网络时，他们面临的主要挑战之一是有效利用底层网络资源，以动态和可扩展的方式促进网络服务的设计、交付和运营。这一挑战称为网络功能虚拟化资源分配，可以通过称为服务功能链组合和服务功能链嵌入的两个阶段来解决。第一阶段的主要目标是组成一个优化的虚拟网络功能链，提供完整的网络服务。第二阶段负责将此类网络服务嵌入到基于虚拟化技术的物理基础设施上。在本文中，我们提出了一种元启发式算法，以在解决组合阶段时应对精确方法的可扩展性挑战。我们的元启发式方法的性能表明，可以在合理的运行时间内处理大型、复杂和异构的服务请求，与现有技术中的启发式方法相比，可以找到更好的结果。