Charting an intent driven network

Abstract

The current strong divide between applications and the network control plane is desirable for many reasons; but a downside is that the network is kept in the dark regarding the ultimate purposes and intentions of applications and, as a result, is unable to optimize for these. An alternative approach, explored in this paper, is for applications to declare to the network their abstract intents and assumptions; e.g. "this is a Tweet", or "this application will run within a local domain". Such an enriched semantic has the potential to enable the network better to fulfill application intent, while also helping optimize network resource usage across applications. We refer to this approach as intent driven networking (IDN), and we sketch an incrementally-deployable design to serve as a stepping stone towards a practical realization of the IDN concept within today's Internet.

A Survey on Intent-Driven Networks

“…The authors in [32] used Lumi to construct an intent refinement process that transforms natural language into network strategies. Other translation methods are also being adopted, such as primitive verb composition [33] and sequence-to-sequence learning model [34]. Also, the intent solver was designed in [35] to handle the logical consistency problem of multiple intents.…”

Recent Advances in Intent-Based Networking: A Survey

“…This approach uses network representation learning which uses ML algorithms to represent networks appropriately which can be useful to solve implicit context in intent-based networking. An intent driven networking (IDN) concept is coined in [30] where hierarchical strictures of mediators are used to keep track of the intent status and realign accordingly. Software developed by VeriFlow [31] aims to develop the intent-based networking from a different perspective by focusing on precisely formalizing network behavior by means of measurements and then verifying it against user intent to avoid any deviations.…”

A Controlled Natural Language to Support Intent-based Blockchain Selection

“…In [6], the authors describe an intent-based approach to discover and deploy networks. The intents use a verb-objectsubject sentence structure and are specified as tuples.…”

“…There are still open challenges for the proposed approach, such as scalability of the deployment and security-related aspects. [8] Natural language Machine learning Network management [7] Natural language Multi-layer translation Network management [18] JSON N/A Network management [6] Tuples Ontology Network Management [3] Natural language Linear regression Cloud management [9] Natural language Label trees Cloud management This Work CNL Lookup tables Blockchain…”