Clarifying the Concepts of Intent and Policy
draft-clemm-nmrg-dist-intent-01

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Network Working Group                                           A. Clemm
Internet-Draft                                                    Huawei
Intended status: Informational                              L. Ciavaglia
Expires: January 19, 2019                                          Nokia
                                                            L. Granville
                         Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)
                                                           July 18, 2018

              Clarifying the Concepts of Intent and Policy
                    draft-clemm-nmrg-dist-intent-01

Abstract

   Intent and Intent-Based Networking are taking the industry by storm.
   At the same time, those terms are used loosely and often
   inconsistently, in many cases overlapping with other concepts such as
   "policy".  This document is therefore intended to clarify the concept
   of "Intent" and how it relates to other concepts.  The goal is to
   contribute towards a common and shared understanding of terms and
   concepts which can then be used as foundation to guide further
   definition of valid research and engineering problems and their
   solutions.

Status of This Memo

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

   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 January 19, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2018 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

Clemm, et al.           Expires January 19, 2019                [Page 1]
Internet-Draft                                                 July 2018

   (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
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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Key Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Definitions and Acronyms  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Introduction of Concepts  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     4.1.  Service Models  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     4.2.  Policy and Policy-Based Management  . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.3.  Intent and Intent-Based Management  . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  Distinguishing between Intent, Policy, and Service Models . .   8
   6.  Items for Discussion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

1.  Introduction

   Traditionally in the IETF, interest with regard to management and
   operations has focused on individual network and device features.
   Standardization emphasis has generally been put on management
   instrumentation that needed to be provided by a networking device.  A
   prime example for this is SNMP-based management and the 200+ MIBs
   that have been defined by the IETF over the years.  More recent
   examples include YANG data model definitions for aspects such as
   interface configuration, ACL configuration, or Syslog configuration.

   There is a sense that managing networks by configuring myriads of
   "nerd knobs" on a device-by-device basis is no longer sustainable in
   modern network environments.  Big challenges arise with keeping
   device configurations not only consistent across a network, but
   consistent with the needs of services they are supposed to enable.
   At the same time, operations need to be streamlined and automated
   wherever possible to not only lower operational expenses, but allow
   for rapid reconfiguration of networks at sub-second time scales.