IoT‐B&B: Edge‐Based NFV for IoT Devices with CPE Crowdsourcing
He Zhu, Changcheng Huang · Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing · 2018
For embracing the ubiquitous Internet‐of‐Things (IoT) devices, edge computing and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) have been enabled in branch offices and homes in the form of virtual Customer‐Premises Equipment (vCPE). A Service Provider (SP) deploys vCPE instances as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) on top of generic physical Customer‐Premises Equipment (pCPE) to ease administration. Upon a usage surge of IoT devices at a certain part of the network, vCPU, memory, and other resource limitations of a single pCPE node make it difficult to add new services handling the high demand. In this paper, we present IoT‐B&B, a novel architecture featuring resource sharing of pCPE nodes. When a pCPE node has sharable resources available, the SP will utilize its free resources as a “bed‐and‐breakfast” place to deploy vCPE instances in need. A placement algorithm is also presented to assign vCPE instances to a cost‐efficient pCPE node. By keeping vCPE instances at the network edge, their costs of hosting are reduced. Meanwhile, the transmission latencies are maintained at acceptable levels for processing real‐time data burst from IoT devices. The traffic load to the remote, centralized cloud can be substantially reduced.