5Guard: Isolation-aware End-to-End Slicing of 5G Networks

Abstract

Network slicing logically partitions the 5G infrastructure to cater to diverse verticals with varying requirements. However, resource sharing exposes the slices to threats and performance degradation, making slice isolation essential. Fully isolating slices is resource-prohibitive, prompting the need for isolation-aware network slicing, where each slice is assigned a tailored isolation level to balance security, usability, and overhead. This paper investigates end-to-end 5G network slicing with resource isolation from the perspective of the infrastructure provider, ensuring compliance with the customers' service-level agreements. We formulate the online 5G isolation-aware network slicing (5G-INS) as a mixed-integer programming problem, modeling realistic slice isolation levels and integrating slice prioritization. To solve 5G-INS, we propose 5Guard, a novel adaptive framework that leverages an ensemble of custom optimization algorithms to achieve the best solution within resource budget and time constraints. Our results show that 5Guard increases profit by up to 10.1% in resource-constrained environments and up to 25.4% in a real-world large-scale network compared to the best-performing individual algorithm. Furthermore, we analyze the trade-offs between isolation levels, their impact on resource utilization, and the effects of slice placement, demonstrating significant advantages over baseline approaches that enforce uniform isolation policies.