Joint multi-objective MEH selection and traffic path computation in 5G-MEC systems

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is an emerging technology that allows to reduce the service latency and traffic congestion and to enable cloud offloading and context awareness. MEC consists in deploying computing devices, called MEC Hosts (MEHs), close to the user. Given the mobility of the user, several problems rise. The first problem is to select a MEH to run the service requested by the user. Another problem is to select the path to steer the traffic from the user to the selected MEH. The paper jointly addresses these two problems. First, the paper proposes a procedure to create a graph that is able to capture both network-layer and application-layer performance. Then, the proposed graph is used to apply the Multi-objective Dijkstra Algorithm (MDA), a technique used for multi-objective optimization problems, in order to find solutions to the addressed problems by simultaneously considering different performance metrics and constraints. To evaluate the performance of MDA, the paper implements a testbed based on AdvantEDGE and Kubernetes to migrate a VideoLAN application between two MEHs. A controller has been realized to integrate MDA with the 5G-MEC system in the testbed. The results show that MDA is able to perform the migration with a limited impact on the network performance and user experience. The lack of migration would instead lead to a severe reduction of the user experience. •The paper focuses on joint Multi-access Edge Host (MEH) selection and traffic path computation.•The paper proposes a procedure to define a graph to account network and application performances.•The paper proposes the Multi-objective Dijkstra Algorithm (MDA) to solve the problems.•MDA uses the defined graph and computes the Pareto front of the Multi-Objective Shortest Path model.•The paper implements a hybrid testbed to evaluate the performance of MDA.•The testbed includes simulative, emulative and experimental parts.•The paper realizes a controller to integrate the MDA with the 5G-MEC system in the testbed.•The controller retrieves the input and applies the output of MDA for network and application layers.