A Hierarchical Management Architecture for Virtual Network Mapping

Network Virtualization is a promising way to deploy future network architectures supporting diverse virtual networks sharing the substrate network. But the increased flexibility poses a daunting challenge to the management and control of the virtual resources to ensure efficient resource utilization and QoS guarantee. In this paper, we propose an architecture based on a hierarchical and multi-domain management mechanism that allows for separate Management Elements responsible for the corresponding domain´s resource assignment individually and executing virtual network embedding in parallel. The hierarchical management framework reduces the complexity, improves the efficiency and satisfies the real-time requirement of virtual network embedding to a shared substrate network.