SMART Intent-Driven Network Management

Abstract

Future communication networks will provide full life cycle network management. However, the complexity of the network management should be reduced even without the requirements of the technical knowledge. Meanwhile, the network expects to be managed in a fully automated manner with humans out of the loop. The emerging intent-driven network (IDN) provides a structured method of specifying the management intent, which is automatically translated and deployed into a network device configuration. In this article, we first introduce the motivations of the IDN and provide an overview of the IDN in various fields. From the perspectives of network systems and user perception, we illustrate the five levels of achieving full autonomous network management. Then we propose an intent-driven network management architecture. In particular, we focus on a specific kind of network management intent, which can be measurable and achievable, leading to rewarding and time-bound full life cycle management, called SMART. Moreover, we give technical details of the SMART architecture. Finally, we develop an intent platform based on OpenStack and present the intent system demonstration interface.