The rapid evolution of communication networks in recent decades has intensified the need for advanced Network and Service Management (NSM) strategies to address the growing demands for efficiency, scalability, enhanced performance, and reliability of these networks. Large Language Models (LLMs) have received tremendous attention due to their unparalleled capabilities in various Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks and generating context-aware insights, offering transformative potential for automating diverse communication NSM tasks. Contrasting existing surveys that consider a single network domain, this survey investigates the integration of LLMs across different communication network domains, including mobile networks and related technologies, vehicular networks, cloud-based networks, and fog/edge-based networks. First, the survey provides foundational knowledge of LLMs, explicitly detailing the generic transformer architecture, general-purpose and domain-specific LLMs, LLM model pre-training and fine-tuning, and their relation to communication NSM. Under a novel taxonomy of network monitoring and reporting, AI-powered network planning, network deployment and distribution, and continuous network support, we extensively categorize LLM applications for NSM tasks in each of the different network domains, exploring existing literature and their contributions thus far. Then, we identify existing challenges and open issues, as well as future research directions for LLM-driven communication NSM, emphasizing the need for scalable, adaptable, and resource-efficient solutions that align with the dynamic landscape of communication networks. We envision that this survey serves as a holistic roadmap, providing critical insights for leveraging LLMs to enhance NSM.

The Metaverse offers a second world beyond reality, where boundaries are non-existent, and possibilities are endless through engagement and immersive experiences using the virtual reality (VR) technology. Many disciplines can benefit from the advancement of the Metaverse when accurately developed, including the fields of technology, gaming, education, art & culture, socialization, commerce, and businesses. Nevertheless, developing the Metaverse environment to its full potential is an ambiguous task that needs proper guidance and directions. Existing surveys on the Metaverse focus only on a specific aspect and discipline of the Metaverse and lack a holistic view of the entire process. Moreover, most surveys refrain from providing detailed guidance about the development process of the metaverse, including its impact on technologies, businesses, existing challenges, and potential research directions due to their lack of a macro and micro perception of such a topic. To this end, a more holistic, multi-disciplinary, in-depth, and academic and industry-oriented review is required to provide a thorough study of the Metaverse development pipeline and fill the gap in existing Metaverse surveys. To address these issues, we present in this survey a novel multi-layered pipeline ecosystem composed of (1) the Metaverse computing, networking, communications and hardware infrastructure, (2) environment digitization, and (3) user interactions. For every layer, we discuss the components that detail the steps of its development. Also, for each of these components, we examine the impact of a set of enabling technologies and empowering domains (e.g., Artificial Intelligence, Security & Privacy, Blockchain, Business, Ethics, and Social) on its advancement. In addition, we explain the importance of these technologies to support decentralization, interoperability, user experiences, interactions, and monetization. Our presented study highlights the existing challenges for each component, followed by research directions and potential solutions. To the best of our knowledge, this survey is the most comprehensive and allows users, scholars, and entrepreneurs to get an in-depth understanding of the Metaverse ecosystem to find their opportunities and potentials for contribution.

Cloud federation has emerged as a new business architecture which aims to help cloud providers cope with the increased waves of demands on their resources and services. Although plenty of solutions have been proposed trying to ensure the optimal formation of cloud federations, these approaches ignore the problem of encountering malicious providers that join federations to destroy them from inside and exclude some strong competitors from the market. To tackle this challenge, we propose in this letter a maximin game theoretical model which assists the broker, responsible for creating and managing federations, with maximizing the detection of such malicious providers. The challenge here is to deal with providers that try to minimize the detection maximization through distributing their misbehavior over several federations and changing their identities from time to time. Experiments conducted using real data from the CloudHarmony dataset reveal that our solution maximizes the detection of malicious providers and improves the profit and Quality of Service of the federations compared to the sky federation model.

In this article, we tackle the network delays in the Internet of Things (IoT) for an enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) through a stable and optimized federated fog computing infrastructure. Network delays contribute to a decline in QoS for IoT applications and may even disrupt time-critical functions. This article addresses the challenge of establishing fog federations, which are designed to enhance QoS. However, instabilities within these federations can lead to the withdrawal of providers, thereby diminishing federation profitability and expected QoS. Additionally, the techniques used to form federations could potentially pose data leakage risks to end-users whose data is involved in the process. In response, we propose a stable and comprehensive federated fog architecture that considers federated network profiling of the environment to enhance the QoS for IoT applications. This article introduces a decentralized evolutionary game theoretic algorithm built on the top of a genetic algorithm mechanism that addresses the fog federation formation issue. Furthermore, we present a decentralized federated learning algorithm that predicts the QoS between fog servers without the need to expose users’ location to external entities. Such a predictor module enhances the decision-making process when allocating resources during the federation formation phases without exposing the data privacy of the users/servers. Notably, our approach demonstrates superior stability and improved QoS when compared to other benchmark approaches.