A Virtual Network Embedding Algorithm for Providing Stronger Connectivity in the Residual Networks

How to efficiently map the nodes and links in a given virtual network (VN) to those in the substrate network (SN) so that the residual substrate network (RSN) can host as many VN requests as possible is a major challenge in virtual network embedding. Most research has developed heuristic algorithms with interactive or two-stage methods. These methods, however, could cause the RSN fragmented into several disconnected components that are insufficient to host a large number of given VN requests. Without loss of generality, we assume that SNs, as the Internet, are small world and scale free, meaning that the average number of hops between any two nodes is a small constant and that most nodes have small degrees while only a small number of nodes have large degrees. Taking advantage of these two properties, we devise in this paper a new twostage VN embedding approach to improve the connectivity of the residual substrate network so that it has the capacity to host more VN requests. Our algorithm uses a greedy strategy that maps neighboring VN nodes to substrate nodes whose distances are bounded by a small constant. We also map the edge nodes of given VN, i.e., nodes with small degrees, to nodes with large degrees in the SN. We then map the links by solving shortest path problems. Our experimental evaluations show that our algorithms offer better mappings and results in significantly fewer rejections for VN requests.