We initiate the polyhedral study of the Virtual Network Embedding (VNE) problem, which arises in modern telecommunication networks. We propose new valid inequalities for the so-called flow formulation. We then prove, through a dedicated flow decomposition algorithm, that these inequalities characterize the VNE polytope in the case of an embedding of a virtual edge on a substrate path. Preliminary experiments show that the new inequalities propose promising speedups for MIP solvers.

翻译：本文首次对现代电信网络中出现的虚拟网络嵌入问题展开多面体研究。我们针对所谓流式表述提出了新的有效不等式。随后通过专门设计的流分解算法证明：在虚拟边沿底层路径嵌入的情形下，这些不等式完整刻画了虚拟网络嵌入多面体。初步实验表明，新增不等式能为混合整数规划求解器带来显著的加速效果。