NFLCS: An Service Function Chain Path Optimization Strategy Based on Network-Functional Layout Clustering

Under the background of 5G and 6G super bandwidth and ultra-low delay, Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization (SDN&NFV) makes the communication technology develop rapidly. Service Function Chain (SFC) selection is a crucial aspect of SDN&NFV, which faces many challenges of poor algorithm performance, high latency, and low profit. Moreover, most of the existing studies are stuck in optimizing for a single metric, which leads to a poor generalization of the proposed path optimization method. In this paper, we propose an SFC path optimization strategy based on the clustering of network functional layouts to address the urgent problem. First, we design a topological network identification algorithm, model the SFC path optimization problem as an attention problem and use a multi-headed attention mechanism to optimize different kinds of SFC layouts in a targeted manner. Among them, the multi-headed attention mechanism achieves the effective capture of multiple features in the SFC path selection problem compared with the traditional strategy. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of Network-Functional Layout Clustering Strategy (NFLCS) in optimizing SFC paths and show the ability to optimize the service function chain paths well in future complex network situations.