Evolvable Design of Network-oriented Services based on Core/Periphery Structure

Abstract

In the recent years, many new network-oriented services have emerged, and such services will need to be virtualized in the multi-access edge computing (MEC) environment, which is currently being standardized along with fifth generation (5G). The service design should be adaptable to user requirements and environmental changes for accommodating a large number of services at low cost. In addition, it is required not only to assume environmental changes when initially designing the service functions network, but also to enable the network to continue to change its structure to adapt to new environmental changes in the future. We have been investigated a core/periphery structure that allows service to effectively adapt to each user request and environmental variation. The advantage of the core/periphery structure is that it helps reduce the costs for maintaining or changing services by distinguishing the service functions into core and periphery functions. In this paper, we propose a method to evolve service functions network based on a core/periphery structure. Adapting to environmental changes requires the addition of interfaces between service functions or the development of new service functions. Our method evolves the structure of the service function network at low cost by keeping the core and peripheral functions at the appropriate scale. Our simulation results reveal that the structure of the service function networks can continue to evolve for a low cost and can maintain a high service accommodation ratio.