Game-Theoretical Approaches for Service Provisioning in Network Virtualization: Survey, Taxonomies and Open Challenges

Abstract

The further growth of the Internet faces a crucial impediment related to the ossification problem. Network virtualization is a promising and emergent solution that has been introduced as a sophisticated diversifying attribute of the future network paradigm. However, there remain many issues standing in the way of its successful realization, such as the service provisioning efficiency in the network virtualization. Many approaches and schemes have been propounded to provide efficient resource management based on game theory. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the existing game theory solutions designed for the different network virtualization environments. We propose a taxonomy for game-theoretical approaches classification. The scope of this survey is to provide a better understanding of the game-theoretical application for resource management in network virtualization. Thus, our inclusive classification considers the various game properties and characteristics as well as the purpose of applying the game theory to the virtualization context.