# VNF Placement and Resource Allocation for the Support of Vertical Services in 5G Networks

## TL;DR

This paper presents a joint approach for VNF placement and resource allocation in 5G networks to efficiently support diverse vertical services, using a queuing model and a novel solution strategy called MaxZ.

## Contribution

It introduces a combined optimization framework with a new solution method, MaxZ, for VNF placement and resource allocation tailored for 5G vertical services.

## Key findings

- MaxZ outperforms existing methods in efficiency and quality.
- The approach closely approximates optimal solutions across scenarios.
- It effectively supports diverse service requirements in 5G networks.

## Abstract

One of the main goals of 5G networks is to support the technological and business needs of various industries (the so-called verticals), which wish to offer to their customers a wide range of services characterized by diverse performance requirements. In this context, a critical challenge lies in mapping in an automated manner the requirements of verticals into decisions concerning the network infrastructure, including VNF placement, resource assignment, and traffic routing. In this paper, we seek to make such decisions jointly, accounting for their mutual interaction, and efficiently. To this end, we formulate a queuing-based model and use it at the network orchestrator to optimally match the vertical's requirements to the available system resources. We then propose a fast and efficient solution strategy, called MaxZ, which allows us to reduce the solution complexity. Our performance evaluation, carried out accounting for multiple scenarios representative of real-world services, shows that MaxZ performs substantially better than state-of-the-art alternatives and consistently close to the optimum.