The Virtual Network Embedding Problem (VNEP) captures the essence of many resource allocation problems of today’s infrastructure providers, which offer their physical computation and networking resources to customers. Customers request resources in the form of Virtual Networks, i.e. as a directed graph which specifies computational requirements at the nodes and communication requirements on the edges. An embedding of a Virtual Network on the shared physical infrastructure is the joint mapping of (virtual) nodes to physical servers together with the mapping of (virtual) edges onto paths in the physical network connecting the respective servers.This work initiates the study of approximation algorithms for the VNEP. Concretely, we study the offline setting with admission control: given multiple request graphs the task is to embed the most profitable subset while not exceeding resource capacities. Our approximation is based on the randomized rounding of Linear Programming (LP) solutions. Interestingly, we uncover that the standard LP formulation exhibits an inherent structural deficit when considering general virtual networks: its solutions cannot be decomposed into valid embeddings. In turn, focusing on the class of cactus request graphs, we devise a novel LP formulation, whose solutions can be decomposed into convex combinations of valid embedding. Proving performance guarantees of our rounding scheme, we obtain the first approximation algorithm for the VNEP in the resource augmentation model.We propose two rounding heuristics and evaluate their performance in an extensive computational study, showing that these consistently yield good solutions (even without augmentations).
Considering approximation algorithms, employed randomized rounding in @cite_7 to obtain a constant approximation for embedding line requests on arbitrary substrate graphs under strong assumptions on the benefits and the capacities. In their interesting work, @cite_11 give an @math time @math -approximation algorithm for minimizing the load of embedding @math -depth trees based on a @math -node substrate. Their result is based on a strong LP relaxation inspired by the Sherali-Adams hierarchy.
@cite_7 @cite_11
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Many resource allocation problems in the cloud can be described as a basic Virtual Network Embedding Problem (VNEP): finding mappings of request graphs (describing the workloads) onto a substrate graph (describing the physical infrastructure). In the offline setting, the two natural objectives are profit maximization, i.e., embedding a maximal number of request graphs subject to the resource constraints, and cost minimization, i.e., embedding all requests at minimal overall cost. The VNEP can be seen as a generalization of classic routing and call admission problems, in which requests are arbitrary graphs whose communication endpoints are not fixed. Due to its applications, the problem has been studied intensively in the networking community. However, the underlying algorithmic problem is hardly understood. This paper presents the first fixed-parameter tractable approximation algorithms for the VNEP. Our algorithms are based on randomized rounding. Due to the flexible mapping options and the arbitrary request graph topologies, we show that a novel linear program formulation is required. Only using this novel formulation the computation of convex combinations of valid mappings is enabled, as the formulation needs to account for the structure of the request graphs. Accordingly, to capture the structure of request graphs, we introduce the graph-theoretic notion of extraction orders and extraction width and show that our algorithms have exponential runtime in the request graphs' maximal width. Hence, for request graphs of fixed extraction width, we obtain the first polynomial-time approximations. Studying the new notion of extraction orders we show that (i) computing extraction orders of minimal width is NP-hard and (ii) that computing decomposable LP solutions is in general NP-hard, even when restricting request graphs to planar ones. We study approximate distributed solutions to the weighted all-pairs-shortest-paths (APSP) problem in the CONGEST model. We obtain the following results. @math A deterministic @math -approximation to APSP in @math rounds. This improves over the best previously known algorithm, by both derandomizing it and by reducing the running time by a @math factor. In many cases, routing schemes involve relabeling, i.e., assigning new names to nodes and require that these names are used in distance and routing queries. It is known that relabeling is necessary to achieve running times of @math . In the relabeling model, we obtain the following results. @math A randomized @math -approximation to APSP, for any integer @math , running in @math rounds, where @math is the hop diameter of the network. This algorithm simplifies the best previously known result and reduces its approximation ratio from @math to @math . Also, the new algorithm uses uses labels of asymptotically optimal size, namely @math bits. @math A randomized @math -approximation to APSP, for any integer @math , running in time @math and producing compact routing tables of size @math . The node lables consist of @math bits. This improves on the approximation ratio of @math for tables of that size achieved by the best previously known algorithm, which terminates faster, in @math rounds. We give an approximation algorithm for non-uniform sparsest cut with the following guarantee: For any @math , given cost and demand graphs with edge weights @math respectively, we can find a set @math with @math at most @math times the optimal non-uniform sparsest cut value, in time @math provided @math . Here @math is the @math 'th smallest generalized eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrices of cost and demand graphs; @math (resp. @math ) is the weight of edges crossing the @math cut in cost (resp. demand) graph and @math is the sparsity of the optimal cut. In words, we show that the non-uniform sparsest cut problem is easy when the generalized spectrum grows moderately fast. To the best of our knowledge, there were no results based on higher order spectra for non-uniform sparsest cut prior to this work. Even for uniform sparsest cut, the quantitative aspects of our result are somewhat stronger than previous methods. Similar results hold for other expansion measures like edge expansion, normalized cut, and conductance, with the @math 'th smallest eigenvalue of the normalized Laplacian playing the role of @math in the latter two cases. Our proof is based on an l1-embedding of vectors from a semi-definite program from the Lasserre hierarchy. The embedded vectors are then rounded to a cut using standard threshold rounding. We hope that the ideas connecting @math -embeddings to Lasserre SDPs will find other applications. Another aspect of the analysis is the adaptation of the column selection paradigm from our earlier work on rounding Lasserre SDPs [GS11] to pick a set of edges rather than vertices. This feature is important in order to extend the algorithms to non-uniform sparsest cut. We study approximate distributed solutions to the weighted all-pairs shortest-paths (APSP) problem in the CONGEST model. We obtain the following results. A deterministic (1+epsilon)-approximation to APSP with running time O(e-2n log n) rounds. The best previously known algorithm was randomized and slower by a Theta(log n) factor. In many cases, routing schemes involve relabeling, i.e., assigning new names to nodes and that are used in distance and routing queries. It is known that relabeling is necessary to achieve running times of o(n log n). In the relabeling model, we obtain the following results. A randomized O(k)-approximation to APSP, for any integer k>1, running in O(n1 2+1 k+D) rounds, where D is the hop diameter of the network. This algorithm simplifies the best previously known result and reduces its approximation ratio from O(k log k) to O(k). Also, the new algorithm uses O(log n)-bit labels, which is asymptotically optimal. A randomized O(k)-approximation to APSP, for any integer k>1, running in time O((nD)1 2 n1 k+D) and producing compact routing tables of size O(n1 k). The node labels consist of O(k log n) bits. This improves on the approximation ratio of Theta(k2) for tables of that size achieved by the best previously known algorithm, which terminates faster, in O(n1 2+1 k+D) rounds. In addition, we improve on the time complexity of the best known deterministic algorithm for distributed approximate Steiner forest.