Agentic Network Architecture and Protocol for Supporting Agent Interconnection Communication and Multi-level Inference
draft-chuyi-nmrg-agentic-network-inference-00

Network Management Research Group                                 C. Guo
Internet-Draft                                              China Mobile
Intended status: Informational                                March 2026
Expires: 3 September 2026

     Agentic Network Architecture and Protocol for Supporting Agent
        Interconnection Communication and Multi-level Inference
             draft-chuyi-nmrg-agentic-network-inference-00

Abstract

   With the advent of the era of AI large models and intelligent agents,
   more and more scenarios about agent interconnection have emerged,
   such as collaboration among multiple agents within a household,
   intelligent robots cooperating to complete pipeline tasks in
   different operations of the industrial Internet, drone groups,
   intelligent vehicle networking, etc.  These scenarios not only
   require low latency and high bandwidth, but also demand efficient
   information exchange and cross-domain coordination and scheduling
   capabilities in complex collaborative tasks.  Therefore, new
   orchestration and management technologies and frameworks are needed
   in existing networks to address this.  The interconnection of
   different agents also brings about an emergence of inference, with a
   large number of inference requests being processed from the mobile
   phone side to the cloud.  In order to improve inference efficiency,
   in a cloud-edge-end multi-layer inference architecture, large models
   and agents at different levels cooperate to complete tasks, resulting
   in a complex intelligent agent interconnection network.  Gateways and
   routers serve as forwarding entries on the network road highways,
   responsible for building communication channels for the agents spread
   throughout the network, which requiring function upgrades to support
   the continuously evolving inference service in the future.

Requirements Language

   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 [RFC2119].

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Guo                     Expires 3 September 2026                [Page 1]
Internet-Draft  Agentic Network Architecture and Protoco      March 2026

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 2 September 2026.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Abbreviations and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Use Case  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Industrial Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2.  Smart Home  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.3.  Cloud-edge-end Collaboration Scenario of Intelligent
           Vehicle Networking  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Definition and Functions of Agentic Gateway . . . . . . . . .   4
     4.1.  Introduction and Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     4.2.  Intelligent Forwarding and Routing  . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.3.  Intent and Network Environment Perception . . . . . . . .   6
     4.4.  Protocol Compatibility and Conversion . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.5.  Support Multi-level Inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.6.  Information Management and Control  . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.7.  Equipment-level Operation and Maintenance Autonomy  . . .   7
     4.8.  Safety  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   5.  Architecture of Agentic Network for Multi-level Inference . .   8
     5.1.  Architecture and Functions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

Guo                     Expires 3 September 2026                [Page 2]
Internet-Draft  Agentic Network Architecture and Protoco      March 2026

   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.1.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.2.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9

1.  Introduction

   Agentic Network refers to a network composed of ubiquitous agents,
   intelligent network elements, and network resources.  It addresses
   the issue of multi-agent collaboration across network domains,
   leveraging network capabilities to meet the interconnected
   communication and management needs of various forms of agents.  It
   connects edge communication networks and devices, completing network
   intelligence upgrades.  Toward the future, the Agentic (IP) Network
   will become a new generation of intelligent IP network, building a
   high-speed pathway for intelligent agent interconnection and serving
   as the core brain and transit station for agent interconnection and
   collaboration.

   In this background, intelligent and autonomous network routing
   management &control will enter a new stage characterized by
   "intention-driven, autonomous collaboration, and inherent security".
   With intelligent agents as the core, the routing architecture will be
   restructured, achieving a qualitative change from "passive
   adaptation" to "active prediction" and from "single-point
   optimization" to "global collaboration".

2.  Abbreviations and Definitions

   Agentic (IP) network:  A novel network architecture composed of
      ubiquitous ubiquitous agents, intelligent and non-intelligent
      network elements, computing resources, and network link resources,
      which supports agent interconnection technologies and functions
      such as intention transfer, semantic communication, knowledge and
      context-driven mechanisms, implementing agent interconnection
      protocols, and enables efficient collaboration among multiple
      agents as well as distributed multi-level inference.

   Agentic gateway:  Agentic gateway is the intelligent network element,
      capable of autonomously perceiving information and taking
      corresponding actions.  It can perform all the functions of a
      gateway while integrating AI capabilities to execute planning,
      analysis, decision-making, and action execution for specific
      functions (such as intelligent route recommendation) or autonomous
      events.

   (To be added)

Guo                     Expires 3 September 2026                [Page 3]
Internet-Draft  Agentic Network Architecture and Protoco      March 2026

3.  Use Case

   This chapter lists three typical application scenarios of agent
   interconnection, describing the capabilities and requirements of the
   agentic network and gateway needed.

3.1.  Industrial Internet

   Industrial Internet involves collaboration among smart manufacturing
   robots.  In the production line, they cooperate to complete tasks,
   conduct multimodal data sensing, and fulfill their missions under the
   coordination and control of edge gateways.  Edge gateways aggregate
   data from various device agents, perform local preprocessing
   (filtering invalid data, extracting key features), and avoid network
   congestion caused by directly connecting massive data to the cloud.
   At the same time, they can issue some control instructions (such as
   regional collaborative control instructions to achieve device linkage
   operation).  Different agent devices within the gateway can share
   data, identify anomalies, and provide collaborative early warning and
   handling of faults.

3.2.  Smart Home

   (To be expanded)

3.3.  Cloud-edge-end Collaboration Scenario of Intelligent Vehicle
      Networking

   (To be expanded)

4.  Definition and Functions of Agentic Gateway

4.1.  Introduction and Definition

   Intelligent network elements refer to network equipment hardware that
   integrates AI technology to fulfill network functions.  Intelligent
   gateways leverage the analysis and generation capabilities of AI
   large or small models to accomplish new forwarding, control,
   management, and other functions in the context of the development in
   the AI era.  These functions include but are not limited to
   intelligent traffic identification, intelligent route recommendation,
   intelligent forwarding, user-level/service-level service
   identification, autonomous operation and maintenance, achieving
   triple perception and tuning of themselves, the network, and
   services, while autonomously allocating resources, realizing event
   self-looping, supporting emerging inference services, and enhancing
   user service experience.

Guo                     Expires 3 September 2026                [Page 4]
Internet-Draft  Agentic Network Architecture and Protoco      March 2026

   Each intelligent network element (NE) itself is an agent capable of
   performing all the functions of a NE.  It has evolved from passive
   execution of single rules to active perception, discovery, and
   intelligent processing.  Equipped with intelligent agent capabilities
   such as perception, planning, analysis, decision-making, and
   execution, it can do more than traditional NEs.  As a "neuron" in the
   interconnected intelligent agent network, it can participate in
   higher-level decision-making and regulation.

   Agentic gateway can support:

   *  The original gateway/router network elements were mostly passively
      responsive, executing a single rule function.  The upgraded
      network elements can automatically complete functions in a closed
      loop, leveraging the capabilities of AI models, both large and
      small, to enhance automation and intelligence levels, reducing
      manual intervention.

   *  For agent interconnection, in order to face the complex agent
      interconnection scenarios in the future, it is necessary to
      enhance network capabilities, and the analysis, generation, and
      decision-making abilities of intelligent agents can be improved.

   *  The interconnection and management scheduling of multiple
      intelligent network elements.  The advent of the agent era demands
      closer cooperation and interconnectivity among networks.  The
      intelligence of network elements signifies the flexibility in
      supporting service operations.

4.2.  Intelligent Forwarding and Routing

   Unlike traditional address-based peer-to-peer information routing and
   forwarding, in the era of agent communication, tasks are first
   decomposed and grouped, followed by necessary communication for task
   execution or inference.  After task triggering, agents and routing
   protocols in appropriate domains are matched based on service
   characteristics and requirements, enabling intelligent agent routing
   decisions and addressing.

   Service characteristics can be based on the current task
   classification (such as ordering, navigation, etc.), or can be
   classified according to time-delay sensitivity, data without loss,
   high bandwidth, etc.

   The capability graph can be used to search for an appropriate list of
   agents during addressing.  This process can be combined with the
   capabilities of agents, application intents, real-time loads, and
   link quality for dynamic addressing.  Based on the characteristics of

Guo                     Expires 3 September 2026                [Page 5]
Internet-Draft  Agentic Network Architecture and Protoco      March 2026

   the agents, targeted traffic distribution can be implemented.
   Furthermore, through self-learning, the selection of the optimal path
   can be reinforced.

4.3.  Intent and Network Environment Perception

   Agentic gateway should achieve autonomous event detection and
   handling, perceive and forward information intentions, and sense the
   state of the intelligent agent (online/offline), load, link quality,
   computing power, and other environmental states.  Based on this, it
   should search for the next hop/destination.  At the same time, it
   must also perceive abnormal signals, understand the significance of
   collected data signals, trigger corresponding actions, possess key
   technologies such as strategy translation and generation, achieve
   triple perception and tuning of itself, the network, and the
   business, autonomously allocate resources, and realize an event self-
   loop.

4.4.  Protocol Compatibility and Conversion

   *  Regardless of whether the devices come from the same manufacturer,
      a unified protocol must be adopted to facilitate routing to nearby
      or edge large model servers within the same gateway.  The gateway
      can automatically identify the protocol, align fields, semantics
      and capability descriptions, then generate adaptations.

   *  Supports semantic communication, supports the conversion of
      modalities between different agents, and supports the conversion
      of context content (such as MCP result conversion).

4.5.  Support Multi-level Inference

   In a cloud-edge-end multi-tier inference architecture, the gateway
   connects end-side agents, edge nodes, backbone routers, and the
   cloud.  The edge resource pool typically deploys lightweight or
   specialized large models and agents, while the central cloud can host
   super agents and full-scale large models.  Before cross-domain
   interconnection, the gateway performs edge analysis and processing to
   determine which tasks should be sent to edge nodes for inference and
   which should be forwarded to central nodes.  This enables
   hierarchical forwarding of service flows and data pre-processing,
   avoiding the upload of massive amounts of raw redundant data to the
   cloud.  This analysis process can leverage large and small model
   capabilities to complete the tasks.

Guo                     Expires 3 September 2026                [Page 6]
Internet-Draft  Agentic Network Architecture and Protoco      March 2026

4.6.  Information Management and Control

   Discovering newly online agents and reporting this information to
   higher-level management, allowing registration and reporting through
   the edge gateway.  It manages intra-domain agent addresses,
   synchronizes and maintains teaming information, and ensures
   consistency between routing identifiers and networking relationships.

   Acting as an execution entity for upper-layer orchestration and
   management, it possesses information reporting capabilities, executes
   management instructions from higher layers, and implements cross-
   domain access control.  The information reported by network elements
   is aggregated at the management layer, where it is uniformly invoked
   and analyzed by the super agents in the orchestration layer.

4.7.  Equipment-level Operation and Maintenance Autonomy

   Equipment-level operation and maintenance autonomy can achieve
   autonomous and fully automated Operation and Maintenance through
   agentic network elements:

   *  Capabilities of Autonomous Perception and Problem Handling:
      Equipped with the ability to autonomously perceive the environment
      and detect data issues, identify problems, and handle network
      events.  It can independently complete fault diagnosis and problem
      localization, support automatic duty reporting, and enable
      automatic configuration distribution along with self-inspection
      before service deployment.

   *  Autonomous Event Handling: Capable of real-time perception of the
      network environment and business data, automatically completing
      data reporting to achieve 24/7 unattended autonomous operation.
      It proactively discovers, identifies, and processes network
      events, accurately determines the type of issue, and autonomously
      completes the analysis and resolution of network events

   *  Interoperation with Other Intelligent Elements: To meet specific
      operation and maintenance requirements for users, it can
      autonomously initiate mutual recognition, interconnection, mutual
      inspection, and information exchange with other intelligent
      network elements.  It supports interconnection and interoperation
      with other agents, mutual status verification, and efficient
      exchange of fault information.

Guo                     Expires 3 September 2026                [Page 7]
Internet-Draft  Agentic Network Architecture and Protoco      March 2026

4.8.  Safety

   *  Conducting network security status monitoring, with intelligent
      threat tracing and full lifecycle auditing capabilities,
      leveraging AI-driven situational awareness and anomaly detection
      to identify covert attacks.

   *  Access control (blacklists, etc.)

   *  Data security

   (To be expanded)

5.  Architecture of Agentic Network for Multi-level Inference

5.1.  Architecture and Functions

   Agentic (IP) network refers to a network composed of software and
   hardware designed for ubiquitous agent interconnection.  It primarily
   consists of underlying connectivity resources, computing resources
   (computing nodes, data centers, etc.), intelligent agent-enabled
   network elements in the middle, an upper-layer coordination
   management system, as well as the applications at the edge and in the
   center.  It is deployed in a master-slave distributed mode and
   supports cross-domain collaboration.

   The architecture can include the application layer, orchestration
   layer, management and control layer, device and network layer,
   computing resource layer, and data layer.  The application layer
   primarily targets agent applications and scenarios.  The capabilities
   of the management & control layer and orchestration layer can be
   realized through a unified platform.  The device and network layer
   focuses on existing network devices.  The computing resource layer
   refers to the distribution of computing resources that facilitate
   agent interconnection and inference.  The data layer provides a
   unified shared storage for data.

   (To be expanded)

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no requests to IANA.

7.  Security Considerations

   This document describes architecture and protocol of agentic network.
   As such, the following security considerations remain high level,
   i.e., in the form of principles, guidelines or requirements.

Guo                     Expires 3 September 2026                [Page 8]
Internet-Draft  Agentic Network Architecture and Protoco      March 2026

8.  References

8.1.  Informative References

   [CCSA-AIWan]
              CCSA, "Research Report on Artificial Intelligence Wide
              Area Network (AI WAN) (2025)", June 2025.

8.2.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

Author's Address

   Chuyi Guo
   China Mobile
   Beijing
   100053
   China
   Email: guochuyi@chinamobile.com

Guo                     Expires 3 September 2026                [Page 9]