A deep reinforcement learning-based algorithm for reliability-aware multi-domain service deployment in smart ecosystems

Neural Computing and Applications (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

The transition towards full network virtualization will see services for smart ecosystems including smart metering, healthcare and transportation among others, being deployed as Service Function Chains (SFCs) comprised of an ordered set of virtual network functions. However, since such services are usually deployed in remote cloud networks, the SFCs may transcend multiple domains belonging to different Infrastructure Providers (InPs), possibly with differing policies regarding billing and Quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. Therefore, efficiently allocating the exhaustible network resources to the different SFCs while meeting the stringent requirements of the services such as delay and QoS among others, remains a complex challenge, especially under limited information disclosure by the InPs. In this work, we formulate the SFC deployment problem across multiple domains focusing on delay constraints, and propose a framework for SFC orchestration which adheres to the privacy requirements of the InPs. Then, we propose a reinforcement learning (RL)-based algorithm for partitioning the SFC request across the different InPs while considering service reliability across the participating InPs. Such RL-based algorithms have the intelligence to infer undisclosed InP information from historical data obtained from past experiences. Simulation results, considering both online and offline scenarios, reveal that the proposed algorithm results in up to 10% improvement in terms of acceptance ratio and provisioning cost compared to the benchmark algorithms, with up to more than 90% saving in execution time for large networks. In addition, the paper proposes an enhancement to a state-of-the-art algorithm which results in up to 5% improvement in terms of provisioning cost.

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Acknowledgements

This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 777067 (NECOS project) and the national project TEC2015-71329-C2-2-R (MINECO/FEDER). This work is also supported by the “ Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities ” of China University of Petroleum (East China) under Grant 18CX02139A.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Network Engineering, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, C/ Jordi Girona, 1-3 - Edif.C3 - Campus Nord, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    Godfrey Kibalya, Joan Serrat & Juan-Luis Gorricho

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

    Dorothy Okello

  3. College of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, 266580, People’s Republic of China

    Peiying Zhang

Authors
  1. Godfrey Kibalya
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  2. Joan Serrat
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  3. Juan-Luis Gorricho
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  4. Dorothy Okello
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  5. Peiying Zhang
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Correspondence to Godfrey Kibalya or Peiying Zhang.

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Kibalya, G., Serrat, J., Gorricho, JL. et al. A deep reinforcement learning-based algorithm for reliability-aware multi-domain service deployment in smart ecosystems. Neural Comput & Applic (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-020-05372-x

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Keywords

  • Multi-domain orchestration
  • Service function chaining
  • Service reliability
  • QoS embedding
  • Multi-attribute embedding