Cisco Systems Cisco Systems Cisco Systems Cisco Systems Univ. of Auckland Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd Alcatel-Lucent Autonomic systems were first described in 2001. The fundamental goal is self-management, including self-configuration, self-optimization, self-healing and self-protection. This document applies the concepts of autonomic systems to a network, and describes the definitions and design goals of Autonomic Networking. The goal is a network where nodes have minimal dependencies on human administrators or centralized management systems.