Stateless Resource Sharing in Networks with Multi-Layer Virtualization

Network QoS, fairness and resource sharing control are open challenges of network slicing and virtualization in 5G and future networks providing ultra-high speed Internet access. Traditional stateful solutions either employ the one-size-fits-all approach to provide services to end-users, regardless of the requirements of vertical services, or require real-time network monitoring and complex feedback loops for ensuring appropriate resource allocation at any time. In the past years, different core-stateless resource sharing solutions as scalable alternatives to traditional stateful approaches have recently emerged for closed networking domains like access, enterprise and data center networks. In this paper, we extend the core-stateless Per Packet Value (PPV) framework with the support of resource sharing policies across multiple layers of virtualization where policies defined by both physical and virtual network operators should be taken into account at the same time. To this end, we propose a re-marking mechanism that re-calculates packet markings during the transition from one virtualization layer to another, ensuring the desired resource sharing among end-users, network slices and physical networks without the need of real-time monitoring and complex feedback loops in the network core. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first core-stateless proposal that offers resource sharing for multiple layers of virtualization.