Low-latency orchestration for workflow-oriented service function chain in edge computing

Abstract To realize a cost-efficient, affordable, economical, flexible, elastic and innovative network service, the concepts of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Network (SDN) have emerged in edge computing. In the case of NFV deployment, most research regards the deployment of Service Function Chaining (SFC), which is composed of several series-connected Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). Current NFV deployment approaches concern how to efficiently deploy the chaining service requests. They do not consider the possible form of the service requests in edge computing. Furthermore, the study regarding response latency in NFV is limited to the chaining service requests. Most studies consider the deployment of several VNFs in one SFC onto the same substrate node to reduce the total latency and resource consumptions. In this paper, we first propose a novel workflow-like service request (WFR), which is completely different from the chaining service request. Then, a Dynamic Minimum Response Time considering Same Level (DMRT_SL) has been proposed to efficiently map the workflow-like requests in edge computing. We use a randomly generated topology as our underlying network. It can be seen from the data obtained from a large number of simulation experiments that DMRT_SL not only is particularly outstanding in terms of response time delay but that blocking rate and deploy time behavior are also particularly surprising.