Optimizing Edge Resource Allocation for Sustainable and Latency-aware Applications

The advent of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and virtualized Content Delivery Network (vCDN) has revolutionized the deployment of resources at the edge of the network, offering a more efficient alternative to traditional CDN architectures. However, this approach introduces the challenge of resource limitations at the edge, making effective resource allocation a critical issue. This paper tackles the problem of placement of virtual network functions (VNF) by proposing a planning strategy to assign end-users access points to edge servers where vCDN functions are deployed, ensuring compliance with Service Level Agreement (SLA) while minimizing the energy consumption. We show that the problem is NP-hard and then propose a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) to formulate our problem, making use of a non-linear energy model from the literature to estimate the energy footprint. We evaluate the proposal leveraging real traffic demand data from a nationwide mobile operator to model realistic network conditions. Additionally, we investigate the impact of varying the number of edge servers on the overall energy footprint. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimization strategy in reducing energy consumption while maintaining the required quality of service compared to a baseline approach.