Survivable virtual network mapping with content connectivity against multiple link failures in optical metro networks

Network connectivity, i.e., the reachability of any network node from all other nodes, is often considered as the default network survivability metric against failures. However, in the case of a large-scale disaster disconnecting multiple network components, network connectivity may not be achievable. On the other hand, with the shifting service paradigm towards the cloud in today's networks, most services can still be provided as long as at least a content replica is available in all disconnected network partitions. As a result, the concept of content connectivity has been introduced as a new network survivability metric under a large-scale disaster. Content connectivity is defined as the reachability of content from every node in a network under a specific failure scenario. In this work, we investigate how to ensure content connectivity in optical metro networks. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions and develop what we believe to be a novel mathematical formulation to map a virtual network over a physical network such that content connectivity for the virtual network is ensured against multiple link failures in the physical network. In our numerical results, obtained under various network settings, we compare the performance of mapping with content connectivity and network connectivity and show that mapping with content connectivity can guarantee higher survivability, lower network bandwidth utilization, and significant improvement of service availability.