Resource optimization for carrier-scale programmable networks

This paper proposes to use a programmable network to offer a new type of wholesale product. By augmenting the wholesale of carriage with the wholesale of network-based computation, the need for server overlay deployment to support retail service providers is reduced or eliminated. The paper develops an efficient algorithm for allocation and management of processing and transport resources. This algorithm is designed to optimize a large network supporting many retail service providers. The algorithm is based on the Lagrangian relaxation method and provides error bounds so that the accuracy of the solution can be ascertained. Numerical results are presented and the benefit of the optimization for a simple multiservice scenario is assessed.