A multi-commodity flow based approach to virtual network resource allocation

The virtual network (VN) concept has been studied as a useful mean in supporting rapid service creation and deployment. This paper proposes a scheme for allocating resources to VNs with the objective of maximizing the number of VNs that can be accommodated into a network. In our scheme, resources are pre-allocated for each pair of edge nodes, using the solution to the multi-commodity flow problem. A VN creation request consists of a set of edge node pairs and the bandwidth requirements between each pair. A request is satisfied or accepted by utilizing the pre-allocated resource and possibly the residual resource pool after pre-allocation. Extensive simulation studies show that the proposed scheme accepts more VN requests and yields better network resource utilization over traditional approaches. Service providers may potentially boost revenue by a simple switch to a more intelligent resource allocation scheme.