Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is a key enabler of 5 G networks, supporting handling latency, bandwidth, and connectivity requirements. However, integrating MEC with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) introduces significant challenges in resource management, Quality of Service (QoS) assurance, and scalability. Existing performance evaluation methods do not meet the expectations of addressing the complexity and reliability needed for SDN-based MEC systems. This paper proposes a stochastic modeling framework based on Stochastic Petri Nets (SPN) to assess the performance of MEC-SDN architectures. The model captures workload dynamics, system utilization, and failure conditions, providing a comprehensive and scalable performance evaluation tool. The method is validated through a real-world Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) scenario deployed on a cluster of single-board computers. Experimental results demonstrate up to 99.85% system utilization, low bandwidth consumption, and model validation within a 95% confidence interval. These outcomes confirm the model's effectiveness in evaluating SDN-enabled MEC deployments' resource allocation and performance.

The evolution of mobile technology from the fifth-generation (5G) radio access has amplified challenges. As new requirements emerge, there is a need for enhanced computational capacity for planning, operation, and availability posed by 5G. Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) and Software-defined networks (SDN) are fundamental to addressing capacity planning and availability. This paper presents a hierarchical modeling approach using reliability block diagrams (RBD) and continuous-time Markov chains (CTMC) to estimate the MEC SDN-based availability and capacity-oriented availability (COA). The proposed models allow analytical evaluations for calculating dependability metrics, showing an availability increase from 97.33% to 99.58%, with only two clustered server nodes, effectively reducing annual downtime from 357.32 hours to 0.65 hours.

Traffic reduction in network segments through cache implementations has become a major research topic due to the exponential increase in data requests through the network. Even with high-speed connections, the conventional model still depends on point-to-point communication between two systems. Throughout the world, more connected devices are, accessing services and obtaining information. To support this activity, servers must have massive storage to support creation, retrieval, updated and deletion of large amounts of data. Therefore, in studies of Information Centric Networks (ICN), this model has been widely discussed as the new content distribution model for the Internet. To provide improved network management many approaches are using software-defined networks (SDN) to develop flexible content-based networks. This paper proposes to use cache replication for ICN through SDN to avoid duplicated requests in the same connection. The redundant cache reduced the bandwidth consumed by duplicated requests, from a maximum of 3.20 Gbps to 2.07 Gbps, reducing the bandwidth consumption by 11.3%.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new approach to computer networks that decouple the control from the data transmission function and is directly programmable through a high level programming language. In parallel Information Centric Network (ICN) influences the use of information through network caching, multipart communication and interaction of models, separating senders and recipients. Moreover, to due programmable features, SDN and ICN projects are architectures developed to flexibilize environments, mitigate traffic problems, deliver content through a scalable network structure, and yet avaiable a simple management. The premise of the SDN that contemplates the ICN besides decoupling, is the flexibility of the network configurations to reduce the overhead of the segments because of the retransmission of duplicate files by the same segment where they travel. Another important point is that contents provided do not give guarantees on the files integrity since they are routed through the same nodes several times pointing to biases. Based on this information, an architecture is designed to provide reliable content, that can be replicated in the network [16]. The proposed architecture aims to develop an ICN network, storing the information through a logical volume using private clouds, and that the stored content remains in a file system external to the network.