Don'T Interrupt Me When You Reconfigure My Service Function Chains

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are complementary and core components of modernized networks. In this paper, we consider the problem of reconfiguring Service Function Chains (SFC) with the goal of bringing the network from a sub-optimal to an optimal operational state. We propose optimization models based on the make-before-break mechanism, in which a new path is set up before the old one is torn down. Our method takes into consideration the chaining requirements of the flows and scales well with the number of nodes in the network. We show that, with our approach, the network operational cost defined in terms of both bandwidth and installed network function costs can be reduced and a higher acceptance rate can be achieved, while not interrupting the flows.