Resource Efficiency and Survivability of Network Slice Isolation Strategies after Massive Outages

The increasing digitalization of various industries requires communication services tailored to specific needs. Providing these services on a shared communication infrastructure is challenging because the performance, dependability, and security requirements are heterogeneous and sometimes even conflicting. The new generations of mobile networks (5G/6G) will enable the provision of separate, isolated, customized communication services through network slicing, which can have different requirements. The isolation of service provisioning is needed to protect critical services. This paper focuses on how varying degrees of network slice isolation will protect and restore critical services in case of massive outages. We implement alternative network slice isolation to study the trade-offs between resource utilization and the performance of communication services. Specifically, we conduct a survivability assessment of the isolation strategies during and after a massive outage caused by software bugs and cyber-Attacks. The main observations show how stricter isolation methods decrease resource utilization and network performance in regular operations due to constraints on resource allocation. On the other hand, the study shows that isolation methods significantly benefit critical slices during massive outages, illustrating a system's vulnerability to internal threats such as software bugs and intentional cyber-Attacks.