Off-peak energy-wise link reconfiguration for virtualized network environment

Energy consumption in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is 10% of the total energy consumed in industrial countries. Recently, Virtualized Network Environment (VNE) has been emerged in this technology. Therefore, it is essential to develop novel techniques that reduce VNE´s energy consumption. In this paper, we formulate a Binary Integer Linear Program (BILP) that reconfigures already allocated virtual networks to minimize VNE´s link power consumption, during off-peak periods. Because the formulated BILP is NP-hard, a novel heuristic algorithm is also suggested. The simulation results confirm the proposed solutions save notable amount of energy in VNE´s substrate links, during off-peak hours.