Cost-efficient virtual optical network embedding for manageable inter-data-center connectivity

Network virtualization opens the door to novel infrastructure services offering connectivity and node manageability. In this letter, we focus on the cost-efficient embedding of on-demand virtual optical network requests for interconnecting geographically distributed data centers. We present a mixed integer linear programming formulation that introduces flexibility in the virtual-physical node mapping to optimize the usage of the underlying physical resources. Illustrative results show that flexibility in the node mapping can reduce the number of add-drop ports required to serve the offered demands by 40%. © 2013 ETRI.