Intent Translation Engine

The increased difficulty to define an manage goals and policies enforced to networks has raised the definition of intent-based networking (IBN). It abstracts the definition of those goals and policies in the form of network intents. For IBN to be properly realized, it is envisioned that many stakeholders would be involved in the translation of network intents to particular policies and configurations. Thus, there will be many components and services that would be composed to construct a solution to implement network intents. This document specifies the schemas and models required to realize the data formats and interfaces needed to enable composition of services to build a translation engine for network intents, namely the Intent Translation Engine.

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

This document specifes the requires data formats and interfaces that MUST be implmeented by the components of an Intent Translation Engine (ITE). This therefore extends RFC 9316 and drives the implementation of the specifications REQUIRED to propertly classify network intents.

The data formats required for enabling interaction between the ITE and network tenants are: [TF1] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used to format intents introduced in the ITE. [TF2] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used to format declarations of intent semantics---namely, the set of concepts, relations, and ontologies that can be present in an intent. The intefaces required for enabling interaction between the ITE and network tenants are: [TI1] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used by a tenant or other external entity to format and transmit an intent to the ITE. [TI2] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used by an ITE to publish---via NETCONF and others---the intent semantics it supports. Particularly, the set of concepts, relations, and ontologies that can be used by tenants to define input intents. The present document will also specify the minimum set of semantics that must be supported by any ITE and discovered by the interactions described in this section.

The data formats required for enabling interaction between the ITE and network management systems are: [MF1] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used by a management system to format declarations of management mechanisms and by an ITE to format their compositions. This schema and model comprhends the definitions for both management information and commands. Hence, this schema follows the definitions of RFC 9232 to specify data formats for telemetry transmission. The intefaces required for enabling interaction between the ITE and network management systems are: [MI1] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used by a management system to publish---via NETCONF and others---the management mechanisms it provides for being composed to implement policies and network services. This schema also follows the definitions of RFC 9232 to specify telemetry interactions. The present document will also specify the minimum set of management mechanisms that must be provided by a management system for proper intent support.

The data formats required for enabling interaction between the ITE and the VIM are: [VF1] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used to format declarations of network resources and virtual network functions (VNFs). [VF2] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used to format NSDs. The intefaces required for enabling interaction between the ITE and the VIM are: [VI1] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used by a VIM to publish---via NETCONF and others---the network resources and virtual network functions (VNFs) it provides. The present document will also specify the minimum set of network resources and VNFs that must be provided by a VIM for proper intent support.

The data formats required for enabling interaction between the ITE and external services are: [EF1] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used to format declarations of networkintents, network resources, and virtual network functions (VNFs). This schema will be used by elements that will use intents to interact with management systems, such as AINEMA, which enables the ITE with artificial intelligence functions and which will express management decisions in terms of network intents, as shown here. The intefaces required for enabling interaction between the ITE and external services are: [EI1] Schema---RDF ontology and YANG model---that must be used by an ITE allow external agents to provide network intents and retrieve information about available resources and and virtual network functions (VNFs).

The present document will specify an abstract algorithm that allows an ITE to obtain a set of network service definitions and the composition of management mechanisms that implements the required policies from a set of inputs. The inputs are: a) The intent provided by the tenant or some external agent. b) Set of management mechanisms -- retrieved from some management system available. c) Set of VNFs and network resources -- retrieved from some VIM. The abstract algorithm helps obtaining validated network service definitions and management mechanism compositions which are valid for the available instantiation infrastructure.

TBD

This memo includes no request to IANA.

As with other AI mechanisms, the major security concern for the adoption of intelligent reasoning on external events to manage SDN/NFV systems is that the boundaries of the control and management planes are crossed to introduce information from outside. Such communications MUST be highly and heavily secured since some malfunction or explicit attacks might compromise the integrity and execution of the controlled system. However, it is up to implementers to deploy the necessary countermeasures to avoid such situations. From the design point of view, since all operations are performed within the control and/or management planes, the security level of reasoning solutions is inherited and thus determined by the security measures established by the systems conforming such planes.

TBD