Evolutionary Multiobjective Multicast Virtual Network Function Placement in NFV-SDN Networks

Software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) are promising technologies for demand services that require building flexible multicast transmission mechanisms with requirements for data processing functions at the network nodes. The multicast routing problem in NFVSDN networks seeks to compute multicast-routing trees and place virtual network functions (VNFs), satisfying the traffic demand with optimal resource use and fair data transmission. Since the problem is computationally complex with conflicting objective functions, this paper approaches multicast routing and VNF placement as a multiobjective optimization problem (MOP), minimizing the total resource cost and the maximum transmission delay variance. In this context, this study develops solutions based on Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs). Simulations performed on test instances show that the proposals are promissory by computing efficient and non-dominated solutions when compared to a state-of-the-art mono-objective approach.