autonomic networking

Intent and Intent-Based Networking are taking the industry by storm. At the same time, terms related to Intent-Based Networking are often used loosely and inconsistently, in many cases overlapping and confused with other concepts such as "policy." This document clarifies the concept of "intent" and provides an overview of the functionality that is associated with it. The goal is to contribute towards a common and shared understanding of terms, concepts, and functionality that can be used as the foundation to guide further definition of associated research and engineering problems and their solutions.

This document is a product of the IRTF Network Management Research Group (NMRG). It reflects the consensus of the research group, having received many detailed and positive reviews by research group participants. It is published for informational purposes.

This document proposes guidelines for the design of Autonomic Service Agents for autonomic networks. Autonomic Service Agents, together with the Autonomic Network Infrastructure, the Autonomic Control Plane, and the GeneRic Autonomic Signaling Protocol, constitute base elements of an autonomic networking ecosystem.

This document specifies the GeneRic Autonomic Signaling Protocol (GRASP), which enables autonomic nodes and Autonomic Service Agents to dynamically discover peers, to synchronize state with each other, and to negotiate parameter settings with each other. GRASP depends on an external security environment that is described elsewhere. The technical objectives and parameters for specific application scenarios are to be described in separate documents. Appendices briefly discuss requirements for the protocol and existing protocols with comparable features.

This document is a conceptual outline of an Application Programming Interface (API) for the GeneRic Autonomic Signaling Protocol (GRASP). Such an API is needed for Autonomic Service Agents (ASAs) calling the GRASP protocol module to exchange Autonomic Network messages with other ASAs. Since GRASP is designed to support asynchronous operations, the API will need to be adapted according to the support for asynchronicity in various programming languages and operating systems.

This document defines two autonomic technical objectives for IPv6 prefix management at the edge of large-scale ISP networks, with an extension to support IPv4 prefixes. An important purpose of this document is to use it for validation of the design of various components of the Autonomic Networking Infrastructure.

This document describes a reference model for Autonomic Networking for managed networks. It defines the behavior of an autonomic node, how the various elements in an autonomic context work together, and how autonomic services can use the infrastructure.

This document defines a strategy to securely assign a pledge to an owner using an artifact signed, directly or indirectly, by the pledge's manufacturer. This artifact is known as a "voucher".

This document defines an artifact format as a YANG-defined JSON document that has been signed using a Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) structure. Other YANG-derived formats are possible. The voucher artifact is normally generated by the pledge's manufacturer (i.e., the Manufacturer Authorized Signing Authority (MASA)).

This document only defines the voucher artifact, leaving it to other documents to describe specialized protocols for accessing it.

Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM), as per BCP 161, for data networks is often subject to the problem of circular dependencies when relying on connectivity provided by the network to be managed for the OAM purposes.

Provisioning while bringing up devices and networks tends to be more difficult to automate than service provisioning later on. Changes in core network functions impacting reachability cannot be automated because of ongoing connectivity requirements for the OAM equipment itself, and widely used OAM protocols are not secure enough to be carried across the network without security concerns.

This document describes how to integrate OAM processes with an autonomic control plane in order to provide stable and secure connectivity for those OAM processes. This connectivity is not subject to the aforementioned circular dependencies.

This document describes an experimental use case that employs autonomic networking for the monitoring of Service Level Agreements (SLAs). The use case is for detecting violations of SLAs in a distributed fashion. It strives to optimize and dynamically adapt the autonomic deployment of active measurement probes in a way that maximizes the likelihood of detecting service-level violations with a given resource budget to perform active measurements. This optimization and adaptation should be done without any outside guidance or intervention.

This document is a product of the IRTF Network Management Research Group (NMRG). It is published for informational purposes.

Autonomic systems were first described in 2001. The fundamental goal is self-management, including self-configuration, self-optimization, self-healing, and self-protection. This is achieved by an autonomic function having minimal dependencies on human administrators or centralized management systems. It usually implies distribution across network elements.

This document defines common language and outlines design goals (and what are not design goals) for autonomic functions. A high-level reference model illustrates how functional elements in an Autonomic Network interact. This document is a product of the IRTF's Network Management Research Group.

This document provides a problem statement and general gap analysis for an IP-based Autonomic Network that is mainly based on distributed network devices. The document provides background by reviewing the current status of autonomic aspects of IP networks and the extent to which current network management depends on centralization and human administrators. Finally, the document outlines the general features that are missing from current network abilities and are needed in the ideal Autonomic Network concept.

This document is a product of the IRTF's Network Management Research Group.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has been one of the major buzz words of the networking industry for the past couple of years. And yet, no clear definition of what SDN actually covers has been broadly admitted so far. This document aims to clarify the SDN landscape by providing a perspective on requirements, issues, and other considerations about SDN, as seen from within a service provider environment.

It is not meant to endlessly discuss what SDN truly means but rather to suggest a functional taxonomy of the techniques that can be used under an SDN umbrella and to elaborate on the various pending issues the combined activation of such techniques inevitably raises. As such, a definition of SDN is only mentioned for the sake of clarification.