METHOD FOR OPTIMIZED PLACEMENT OF SERVICE-CHAIN-MONITORING PROBES

Exemplary methods include receiving requests comprising of monitoring zones (MZs), each MZ to be allocated a pair of probes in a network, wherein each MZ is associated with a rule identifying a condition for when its probes are to be updated, and wherein each probe in the network is associated with a rule identifying a condition of when it is updated. The methods include determining whether previously allocated pairs of probes in the network can serve as probes for one or more MZs in the requests, wherein a previously allocated pair of probes can serve as probes for a MZ if a rule associated with the MZ is similar to rules associated with the previously allocated pair of probes. The methods include for each MZ that can be served by a previously allocated pair of probes, sending information identifying the MZ and the previously allocated pair of probes.