A Marketplace-based Approach to Cloud Network Slice Composition Across Multiple Domains

Abstract

Cloud network slicing can be defined as the process that enables isolated end-to-end and on-demand networking abstractions, which: (a) contain both cloud and network resources, and (b) are independently controlled, managed and orchestrated. This paper contributes to the vision of the NECOS project and relevant platform, that aim to address the limitations of current cloud computing infrastructures to accomplish the challenging requirements of the slicing approach. The NECOS platform implements the Slice-as-a-Service model, enabling the dynamic creation of end-to-end (E2E) slices from a set of constituent slice parts contributed from multiple domains. A challenging issue is to define the facility that implements dynamic slice resource discovery, aligned to the requirements of the slice owner or tenant, over different infrastructure providers. Here, we propose a Marketplace-based approach implementing relevant federated interactions for the resource discovery and we detail its architecture, workflows, and information model. We also present its initial implementation details and provide both quantitative and qualitative experimental results validating its main operation.