A Novel Network Delay Prediction Model with Mixed Multi-layer Perceptron Architecture for Edge Computing

Network delay is a crucial indicator for realizing delay-sensitive task offloading, network management, and optimization in B5G/6G edge computing networks. However, the delay prediction for edge networks becomes complicated due to diverse access strategies and heterogeneous services' storage, computing, and communication resource requirements. Current GNN-based delay prediction models such as RouteNet and PLNet lack the ability to express the complex associations between links and paths, so the predicted delay is not accurate. In this paper, we propose a novel end-to-end delay prediction model named MixerNet for edge computing, which is based on the mixed multi-layer perceptron (MLP). In this model, a mixed MLP architecture is applied to represent the association between links in the network topology and various paths. Observing that each link may have different effects on various paths, a weight matrix is then defined and multiplied by the path matrix to express it. Thus, a complete mapping frame from network characteristics (e.g., traffic intensity and routing schemes) to delay indicator is constructed. Finally, we perform extensive experiments on NSFNET and GEANT2 datasets and regard RouteNet as the baseline model. Experimental results show that MixerNet can accurately predict end-to-end delay results on various network topologies and the mean absolute error is merely about 0.36%. MixerNet also outperforms the baseline model in most evaluation indicators, especially the mean square error has a 3-fold decrease in NSFNET.