Title: A blockchain-based NFV market in the multi-node edge computing network

Authors: Suhan Jiang; Jie Wu

Addresses: Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA ' Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Abstract: Currently, network function virtualisation (NFV) incorporates cloud computing (CC) and forms a market, providing elastic and cost-efficient chained network services. This paper considers a new NFV market in edge computing, where NFV providers deploy service chains on near-by EC nodes instead of remote data centres. An optimisation problem is formulated to minimise the deployment costs of a required service chain from an NFV provider's perspective, with user service delay guarantees. Due to its NP-hardness, we investigate two special network models, where we can turn to dynamic programming solutions. We propose a pricing mechanism based on bargaining theory to decide fair resource prices for EC nodes. To relinquish the full power of the NFV provider, we design a blockchain-based system to implement our algorithms using smart contract. Simulations are conducted and numerical evaluations are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of our solutions and the applicability of our system.

Keywords: bargaining theory; blockchain; dynamic programming; edge computing; NFV market; service chain.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSN.2023.129943

International Journal of Security and Networks, 2023 Vol.18 No.1, pp.52 - 64

Received: 19 Jan 2022
Accepted: 20 Jan 2022
Published online: 03 Apr 2023 *