Virtual infrastructure embedding over software-defined flex-grid optical networks

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) enables efficient and scalable network virtualization. Infrastructure resources, such as computing and networking resources, can be abstracted and outsourced as a service using virtualization technology. These SDN features can be extended to the optical transport networks to enable high capacity, low cost, and long reach transport networks. In this paper, we introduce an architecture for Software-Defined Optical Network (SDON), and study the virtual infrastructure embedding (VIE) problem over SDON with the objective of minimizing the blocking probability of VIE requests. We propose two novel heuristic algorithms, namely Compute followed by Network Load Balance (CNLB) and Network followed by Compute Load Balance (NCLB). Specifically, NCLB is the first ever attempt to solve the VIE problem by allocating the networking resource first followed by provisioning the computing resource. We compare these two algorithms with the Shortest-Path Based Embedding (SPBE) algorithm. The simulation results show that both CNLB and NCLB outperform SPBE in terms of minimizing the request blocking probability, and NCLB achieves the best performance.