Published in

MDPI, Future Internet, 11(13), p. 278, 2021

DOI: 10.3390/fi13110278

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Online Service Function Chain Deployment for Live-Streaming in Virtualized Content Delivery Networks: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Video delivery is exploiting 5G networks to enable higher server consolidation and deployment flexibility. Performance optimization is also a key target in such network systems. We present a multi-objective optimization framework for service function chain deployment in the particular context of Live-Streaming in virtualized content delivery networks using deep reinforcement learning. We use an Enhanced Exploration, Dense-reward mechanism over a Dueling Double Deep Q Network (E2-D4QN). Our model assumes to use network function virtualization at the container level. We carefully model processing times as a function of current resource utilization in data ingestion and streaming processes. We assess the performance of our algorithm under bounded network resource conditions to build a safe exploration strategy that enables the market entry of new bounded-budget vCDN players. Trace-driven simulations with real-world data reveal that our approach is the only one to adapt to the complexity of the particular context of Live-Video delivery concerning the state-of-art algorithms designed for general-case service function chain deployment. In particular, our simulation test revealed a substantial QoS/QoE performance improvement in terms of session acceptance ratio against the compared algorithms while keeping operational costs within proper bounds.