@conference {
	title = {Network Function Placement on Virtualized Cellular Cores},
	author = {Dietrich, David., Papagianni, Chrysa. , Panagiotis, Papadimitriou., Baras, John S.},
	year = {2017},
	month = {01/2017},
	abstract = {The proliferation of mobiles devices, application sprawl, and the ever-increasing data volume generates significant~stress on cellular networks and particularly on the cellular~core, also known as the Evolved Packet Core (EPC). This is~further exacerbated by the deployment of hardware appliances~for the implementation of a wide range of network functions~(e.g., gateways, mobility management, firewalls, network address~translation), hindering any opportunity for elastic provisioning,~and eventually leading to high operational costs and a significant~degree of load imbalance across the EPC.~Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has been seen a ~promising solution in order to enable elasticity in the cellular core. Applying NFV to the EPC raises the need for network~function (NF) placement, which in turn entails significant challenges,~due to the stringent delay budgets among cellular core components and the coexistence of communicating data and~control plane elements. To address these challenges, we present a~linear programming (LP) formulation for the computation of NF~placements that strikes a balance between optimality and time
complexity. Our evaluation results show that the LP achieves~significantly better load balancing, request acceptance rate,~and resource utilization compared to a greedy algorithm that~performs NF placement inline with carriers{\textquoteright} common practice~today.~},
	address = {Bengaluru, India},
	booktitle = {9th International Conference on COMmunication Systems \& NETworkS (COMSNETS 2017)},
	pages = {pp. 259-266}
}
