Resource Defragmentation for Network Slicing

Network automation in the fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) requires network slices to be efficiently computed and deployed. In order to guarantee physical isolation for virtual networks and no interference between different slices, it is possible to rely on hard slicing, whose principles can be implemented using Flex Ethernet (FlexE) technology. As slices are created and deleted over time, it is necessary from time to time to defragment resources and reoptimize bandwidth reservations for the remaining slices. In this demo, we present our algorithmic framework, based on Column Generation, and we showcase how to efficiently defragment the network in order to reduce the Maximum Link Utilization (MLU) of current reservations with a minimum number of configuration changes.