Intent-based cognitive closed-loop management with built-in conflict handling

Abstract

The ever-growing complexity in networks and the various future use cases with diverse, and often stringent performance requirements call for a higher level of automation. A tool to achieve this higher level of automation is intent-based management, where the human operator only communicates via high-level intents with the network. Intents are declarative in nature, they specify the desired state but don’t specify how to achieve it. The system will assure that the intents are fulfilled, by monitoring the behavior of the network, and adjusting its configurations if needed. In future networks that will serve multiple tenants and use cases at the same time, many intents will co-exist. As the resources are limited, conflicts may arise between intents. Therefore, a solution is needed for conflict detection and resolution. In this paper, we present a system that is capable of handling multiple intents and detecting and resolving conflicts at run-time. To show the feasibility, we implement our approach in an end-to-end prototype.