An efficient algorithm for fast service edge selection in cloud-based telco networks

© 2021 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Telecommunication operators are increasingly integrating computational infrastructure into their networks at different location levels, including the network edge. This makes a highly distributed processing environment a reality, which is expected to enable next-generation services. This article proposes a novel and efficient algorithm to determine the best service execution locations through the “service edge”, a concept that groups services in categories according to their requirements and benefits from the flexibility of distributed cloud resources. The paper is focused on describing the algorithm so that it can be integrated into the telco operators’ management and orchestration systems. Simulation results underpin the practical feasibility of the proposed algorithm.The European Commission has partly funded this work through the projects NECOS (Grant Agreement No 777067) and 5G-DIVE (Grant Agreement No 859881).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft