Dynamic Network Slicing in Fog Computing for Mobile Users in MobFogSim

Abstract

Fog computing provides resources and services in proximity to users. To achieve latency and throughput requirements of mobile users, it may be useful to migrate fog services in accordance with user movement – a scenario referred to as follow me cloud. The frequency of migration can be adapted based on the mobility pattern of a user. In such a scenario, the fog computing infrastructure should simultaneously accommodate users with different characteristics, both in terms of mobility (e.g., route and speed) and Quality of Service requirements (e.g., latency, throughput, and reliability). Migration performance may be improved by leveraging "network slicing", a capability available in Software Defined Networks with Network Function Virtualisation. In this work, we describe how we extended our simulator, called MobFogSim, to support dynamic network slicing and describe how MobFogSim can be used for capacity planning and service management for such mobile fog services. Moreover, we report an experimental evaluation of how dynamic network slicing impacts on container migration to support mobile users in a fog environment. Results show that dynamic network slicing can improve resource utilisation and migration performance in the fog.