Online Network Slice Deployment across Multiple Domains under Trust Constraints

TL;DR

This paper introduces a real-time, trust-aware network slice deployment method across multiple domains, using a Path-Link formulation and dynamic pricing to optimize resource allocation and reduce blocking.

Contribution

It proposes a novel Path-Link formulation with trust constraints and dynamic pricing, enabling fast, near-optimal online slice placement in multi-domain networks.

Findings

PL formulation closely tracks NL with minimal gaps at low load

Dynamic pricing significantly reduces blocking under resource scarcity

PL reduces computation time by 3x-6x compared to NL, enabling practical runtime

Abstract

Network slicing across multiple administrative domains raises two coupled challenges: enforcing slice-specific trust constraints while enabling fast online admission and placement decisions. This paper considers a multi-domain infrastructure where each slice request specifies a VNF chain, resource demands, and a set of (un)trusted operators, and formulates the problem as a Node-Link (NL) integer program to obtain an optimal benchmark, before proposing a Path-Link (PL) formulation that pre-generates trust and order-compliant candidate paths to enable real-time operation. To mitigate congestion, resource prices are made dynamic using a Kleinrock congestion function, which inflates marginal costs as utilization approaches capacity, steering traffic away from hotspots. Extensive simulations across different congestion levels and slice types show that: (i) PL closely tracks NL with negligible gaps at low load and moderate gaps otherwise, (ii) dynamic pricing significantly reduces blocking under scarce resources, and (iii) PL reduces computation time by about 3x-6x compared to NL, remaining within a few seconds even at high load. These results demonstrate that the proposed PL and dynamic pricing framework achieves near-optimal performance with practical runtime for online multi-domain slicing under trust constraints.