A New Optimization Model and Algorithm for a Network Scheduling Problem in Inter-Datacenters Elastic Optical Networks

The routing and virtual network function (VNF) deployment for VNF service chaining in inter-datacenters elastic optical networks (inter-DC EONs) is an important network scheduling problem. In this paper, the problem tackled is more complex and practical than those tackled in the existing works in the following three aspects: 1) each datacenter can only provide some specific (not all) VNFs; 2) the resource of both bandwidth and datacenters system (not the resource of bandwidth only) is considered; 3) a part of VNFs are dependent (not assuming all VNFs are independent). To solve this challenging problem, we first establish a global optimization model for this problem. Then, an efficient genetic algorithm with tailor-made encoding scheme is proposed to solve the model. Finally, the simulation experiments are conducted on several situations, and the results indicate that the proposed model is reasonable and the proposed algorithm is efficient.