# Joint Pricing, Server Orchestration and Network Slice Deployment in Mobile Edge Computing Networks
## 6 Performance Evaluation
### Performance Comparison
The reason is that with a small number of users, JSOSD and AAS-SD only need to deploy one access function and one VNF chain for each slice, so they have almost the same average user cost. Meanwhile, when the network load is heavy, the advantage of JSOSD in reducing the deployment cost of VNF chain starts to appear. To show the relationships between weights, delay, cost, and utility, we present the performance under different weights in Figure 11. Obviously, as the weight of delay increases, the average delay proportion tends to decrease, while the average user cost tends to increase. This is because a larger \(w_{d}\) means the network prefers to allocate more resources to reduce delay, which may lead to higher costs. In addition, both Figures 10 and 11 show that JSOSD always has the lowest average user cost. Although the delay in JSOSD is higher than that in AAS-SD and JSP2, the comprehensive utility of JSOSD is still the highest, demonstrating that the proposed JSOSD offers a better trade-off between cost and delay. To analyze the changes in the pricing scheme under different network scales, we presented the variation in average pricing levels under different numbers of users in Figure 12. It can be seen that as the number of users increases, the average price level shows a downward trend. The reason is that when the number of users is low, tenants only need to deploy a basic number of access functions and VNF chains. At this point, the InP tends to set a higher price to ensure its own profit. Additionally, the higher price limits the  
Figure 11: System performance comparison in terms of (**a**) average user cost, (**b**) average delay proportion and (**c**) utility of the NPL and the RAL under different weights with fixed pricing scheme. Figure 10: System performance comparison in terms of (**a**) average user cost, (**b**) average delay proportion and (**c**) utility of the NPL and the RAL under different maximum numbers of users with fixed pricing scheme. number of deployed VNF chains, which in turn reduces the number of activated servers. When the number of users increases, although tenants need to increase their deployments and resource usage, if the InP does not lower the price, tenants may choose to tolerate increased delay to reduce costs, becoming less willing to spend. Therefore, the InP decides to lower the price to encourage tenants' consumption as a trade-off. In conclusion, when tenants have fewer choices, the InP will offer higher prices, while when tenants have more choices, the InP will choose to lower prices to promote tenants' consumption. We present the impact of price levels on tenant behavior and system utility in Figure 13. Figure 13a illustrates that as prices increase, tenants reduce the number of deployed access functions and VNF chains in response to cost-saving incentives. Similarly, in Figure 13b, as resource prices rise, tenants reduce their resource consumption. Figure 13c,d show the effects of pricing levels on the utility of the IPL and the utility of tenants (the NPL and the RAL), respectively. It is evident that the utility of the IPL does not necessarily increase monotonically with higher pricing. For example, in Figure 13c, the pricing scheme [0 0 1 1] results in higher utility for the IPL compared with [0 0 2 2], as excessively high price leads tenants to reduce their resource purchases, thereby lowering IPL's revenue. This further confirms that the IPL requires pricing optimization to identify the pricing scheme that maximizes its utility. Moreover, the effect of price increases on tenant's utility is complex, as shown in Figure 13d. Higher prices may either reduce or increase tenant utility, as tenant's costs are determined by both pricing and the quantity of access functions, VNF chains, and resources. When price rises, it leads to a reduction in deployment and resource consumption, which may either increase or decrease tenant's costs. Figure 12: Average price level under different maximum numbers of users. Figure 13: _Cont._