Embedding Algorithm for Virtualizing Content-Centric Networks in a Shared Substrate

Network virtualization enables diversified network architectures to coexist in a substrate network. Content-centric network (CCN), as one of the major proposals for the future network, can be deployed in the virtualized environment. However, the recent work that has attempted in this direction has not addressed issues concerning the unique resource usage of CCN in resource allocations during the embedding procedure when instantiating a virtual CCN (VCCN). The unique problem is the cache component, i.e., the content store, in CCN. This paper will develop a VCCN Mapping Algorithm (VCCNMA) that optimizes the performances of VCCN considering the content store request in addition to CPU and bandwidth. Since the resource allocation problem is NP-hard, this paper thus proposes a heuristic algorithm. Several sets of simulation experiments are performed to evaluate the acceptance ratio, the network cost, the storage utilization ratio and load balance. Results show that the algorithm can achieve better performances. Moreover, the paper also studies the tradeoffs between the network cost and the load balance.