Joint Optimization of Virtualized Network Function Placement and Routing Allocation for Operational Expenditure

With the development of Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) can be deployed in a common platform such as virtual machines in the form of Service Function Chaining (SFC), providing flexibility for management. However for service providers, these come with high OPerational EXpenditure (OPEX), due to the complexity of the network infrastructure and the growing demand for services. To solve this problem, a strategy for OPEX optimization is proposed, which aims to minimize the startup cost, energy consumption, transmission cost and obtain VNF deployment and routing allocation optimization scheme. The VNF deployment problem as a new Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is formulated, and three OPEX optimization algorithms are designed including Genetic Algorithm (GA). The OPEX of MILP model and optimization algorithms are compared under different resource allocation constraints. The calculation result shows that the GA can obtain the near-optimal solutions when node resource ratio is more than 60%.