Location-based Data Model for Optimized Network Slice Placement

Network Slicing has its roots in Network Function Virtualization (NFV) allowing high flexibility in the delivery of end-to-end network services. To achieve Network Slicing promises on efficiency, Network Slice Providers have to ensure optimized resource utilization and to guarantee Quality of Service when managing the life-cycle of a Network Slice. We focus in this paper on Network Slice Placement, intimately related to the VNF Placement and Chaining problem. In contrary to most studies related to VNF placement, we deal with the most complete and complex Network Slice topologies and we pay special attention to the geographic location of Network Slice Users. We propose a data model adapted to Integer Linear Programming. Extensive numerical experiments assess the relevance of taking into account the user location constraints.