Dynamic Detection and Placement for VSFs over Edge Computing Scenarios: An ACO-Based Approach

Abstract

As an extension of cloud computing, the edge computing has become an important pattern to deal with novel service scenarios of the Internet of Everything (IoE), especially for the rapidly increasing different kinds of service requests from edge equipment. It is still a great challenge to satisfy the demands of delay-sensitive applications, so as to optimize the service provision delay for edge equipment under 5G. In this paper, by introducing virtualized service functions (VSFs) into edge computing pattern, the mechanism of service function detection and placement among multiple Edge Computing Servers (ECSs) is proposed. We firstly improve the Ant colony optimization (ACO) method to adapt to the situation that the service requests may frequently change from different edge network domains. Based on the improved ACO, a scheme of searching for the locations (i.e., ECSs) of the requested service functions is devised, so as to optimize the service searching delay. Then, a service function placement scheme is presented, and it deploys most of appropriate service functions in each ECS by predicting the future requested frequencies of functions, which further reduces the overall service provision delay. In addition, it also improves the ECS computing capacity utilization. The simulation results show that the proposed mechanism is feasible and effective.