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#1 Virne: A Comprehensive Benchmark for RL-based Network Resource Allocation in NFV [PDF] [Copy] [Kimi] [REL]

Authors: Tianfu Wang, Liwei Deng, Xi Chen, Junyang Wang, Huiguo He, Zhengyu Hu, Wei Wu, Leilei Ding, Qilin Fan, Hui Xiong

Resource allocation (RA) is critical to efficient service deployment in Network Function Virtualization (NFV), a transformative networking paradigm. This task is termed NFV-RA. Recently, deep Reinforcement Learning (RL)-based methods have been showing promising potential to address this combinatorial complexity of constrained cross-graph mapping. However, RL-driven NFV-RA research lacks a systematic benchmark for comprehensive simulation and rigorous evaluation. This gap hinders in-depth performance analysis and slows algorithm development for emerging networks, resulting in fragmented assessments. In this paper, we introduce Virne, a comprehensive benchmarking framework designed to accelerate the research and application of deep RL for NFV-RA. Virne provides customizable simulations for diverse network scenarios, including cloud, edge, and 5G environments. It features a modular and extensible implementation pipeline that integrates over 30 methods of various types. Virne also establishes a rigorous evaluation protocol that extends beyond online effectiveness to include practical perspectives such as solvability, generalizability, and scalability. Furthermore, we conduct in-depth analysis through extensive experiments to provide valuable insights into performance trade-offs for efficient implementation and offer actionable guidance for future research directions. Overall, with its capabilities of diverse simulations, rich implementations, and thorough evaluation, Virne could serve as a comprehensive benchmark for advancing NFV-RA methods and deep RL applications. The code and resources are available at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/anonymous-virne.

Subject: ICLR.2026 - Poster