Roadmap to a Networkless World
draft-liu-nmrg-networkless-roadmap-00

Network Working Group                                             B. Liu
Internet-Draft                                       Huawei Technologies
Intended status: Informational                              B. Carpenter
Expires: January 3, 2019                               Univ. of Auckland
                                                            July 2, 2018

                     Roadmap to a Networkless World
                 draft-liu-nmrg-networkless-roadmap-00

Abstract

   This draft aims to illustrate possible approaches to make network
   management and operations more autonomic in several aspects.  The
   ultimate goal is that the network could run all by itself, so that
   users/administrators just feel like there isn't a network to take
   care of at all (a.k.a.  "Networkless").  The approaches are described
   in a form of different levels (inspired by the Self-Driven Car
   levels).  The higher the level is, the more autonomic management
   capabilities the network could have.

   Please note that although some specific technologies are categorized
   into different levels, it is not the draft's intent to rank them;
   rather, this draft is more about discussing what's the possible next
   stage and what's the ultimate vision.  Hopefully, this draft could
   collect people's consensus in the industry and provide guidance for
   future technology developments.

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 3, 2019.

Liu & Carpenter          Expires January 3, 2019                [Page 1]
Internet-Draft                 Networkless                     July 2018

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
   (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 Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Goals of Networkless  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Self-Organization Levels  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  Self-Configuration Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.3.  Self-Optimization and Levels  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.4.  Self-Diagnostic Levels  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     2.5.  Self-Healing Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  Key Capablities to Achieve Networkless  . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.1.  Network Perception  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.2.  Decision and Reasoning  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.3.  Operation Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   As the network is evolving rapidly, the system is becoming more and
   more complex; thus managing a network is more and more challenging.
   It has been a common feeling in the industry that the Opex of running
   networks is becoming a vital pain point.  To address the management
   complexity challenges, there are new technologies emerging.  For
   example, Autonomic Networking [RFC7575], which is under
   standardization in IETF Anima working group [Anima], is following an
   approach to allow the network elements do more management related
   things by themselves; the SDN, which has been significantly improved
   the network service delivery efficiency in some scenarios; and more
   recently, the Intent-Based Network concept, which focuses more on the
   operational simplicity perspective, to allow users/administrators

Liu & Carpenter          Expires January 3, 2019                [Page 2]
Internet-Draft                 Networkless                     July 2018

   controll the network system in a radically simple way (a.k.a.
   Intent-driven, rather than detailed configurations).

   This draft is not proposing a new technology, rather, this draft
   collects available tecnologies and illustrates possible future
   technologies and the final effect to network users/administrators.
   The ultimate goal is that the network could run all by itself, so
   that users/administrators just feel like there isn't a network to
   take care of at all (a.k.a.  "Networkless").

   In Section 2, the network management is divided into several aspect
   for discussion, in a administrator perspective.  In each aspect there
   are automation/autonomicity levels to illustrate past (Level 0),
   current state of art (Level 1) and possible future technologies
   (Level 2-4).  Section 3 focuses on some common and vital capabilities
   the network system needs to have, in order to support the goals
   described in Section 2.

2.  Goals of Networkless

2.1.  Self-Organization Levels

   Self-organization represents the ability that network nelements could
   autonomically connect with each other, form domains, or even decide
   the topology/hierarchy/architecture.

   o  Level 0: LAN auto-connection

      -  E.g. current Ethernets can connected with each other without
         any configurations once the cables are connected.

   o  Level 1: IP auto-routing & NE auto-connection to NMS

      -  IGP and BGP protocols allow the routers to connect with each
         other autonomically.

      -  NEs automatically get connected with the NMS, current solutions
         includes DCN, Anima ACP
         [I-D.ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane] etc.

   o  Level 2: Network Areas Self-Division and Key NEs election

      -  E.g.  IGP Area self-division; controller election

   o  Level 3: Network Architecture and NE roles Self-identification

Liu & Carpenter          Expires January 3, 2019                [Page 3]
Internet-Draft                 Networkless                     July 2018

      -  E.g. autonomically identify topology characteristics and divide
         network layers; autonomically identify roles such as access
         gateway, aggregation gateway, core gateway etc.

   o  Level 4: Self-Construction of Network Topologies

      -  E.g. for wireless network or overlay virtual networks

2.2.  Self-Configuration Levels

   o  Level 0: CLI

      -  remote log-in, do configs one by one

   o  Level 1: NE Configs Auto-delivery

      -  Administrators design detailed configurations of each NE, using
         NMS/Controller automatically deliver the configurations

   o  Level 2/3: NE Configs Auto-Compiling

      -  Administrators design network architecture and solutions, the
         network autonomically compiles detailed NE configurations.

      -  All detailed configurations are hosted by software.

      -  More and more machine-native configurations rather than human
         interfaces.

   o  Level 4: Network Self-Orchestration

      -  Administrators/Apps only input highly abstracted service
         requests (e.g., build a wireless backhaul network), then the
         network would deduce all configurations.

2.3.  Self-Optimization and Levels

   This sub-section focuses on traffic forwarding performance of the
   network, mainly include path selection and QoS related issues.

   o  Level 0: Static Traffic Engineering

   o  Level 1: Auto Traffic Load Balance

      -  Controller dynamically adjust paths to achieve balanced traffic
         load, according to specific algorithms;

      -  NE can achieve port-based load balance locally

Liu & Carpenter          Expires January 3, 2019                [Page 4]
Internet-Draft                 Networkless                     July 2018

   o  Level 2/3: Comprehensive SLA/QoS Self-Optimization

      -  The network autonomically optimizes delay, bandwidth etc.
         according to Administrators or App's requirements;

      -  The network autonomically achieves measurement according to the
         optimization goal.

   o  Level 4: Autonomous Optimization

      -  The network generates optimization policies by itself, and keep
         the performance at the best level;

      -  Meanwhile, achieves balance between performance and cost.

2.4.  Self-Diagnostic Levels

   This sub-section focuses on network fault diagnostic.

   o  Level 0: NMS-assisted manual diagnostic

      -  Administrators use tools like ping/tracroute to mannual
         diagnostic

   o  Level 1: Automatic Data Analysis

      -  Software collects data around the whole network, and use data
         mining/machine learning and decision tree to aggregate alarms
         and analyze the cause.

   o  Level 2/3: Precise Fault Location

      -  Precise alarms to report the exact fault events.

      -  Precise location to reveal the real root cause.

   o  Level 4: Fault Prediction

2.5.  Self-Healing Levels

   o  Level 0: NMS-assisted manual healing

      -  Administrators use NMS to manually recover the configurations
         or do the adjustment.

   o  Level 1: Protocol-based Healing

Liu & Carpenter          Expires January 3, 2019                [Page 5]
Internet-Draft                 Networkless                     July 2018

      -  Fixed healing functions built into NEs, such as BFD, and FRR
         etc.

   o  Level 2: Programmable Healing

      -  Administrators can set specific healing policies based on a set
         of general and abstracted rules of dealing with fault.

   o  Level 3/4: Fault Avoiding

      -  According to the prediction, avoid the fault by backup, adjust
         traffic etc.

3.  Key Capablities to Achieve Networkless

3.1.  Network Perception

   o  Level 0: NE-based Statistics and Probe

      -  E.g.  NE port statistics; end to end probe

   o  Level 1: Network Visualization

      -  Telemetry, logs/event analysis etc.

   o  Level 2: Real-time Holographic Network Data

      -  Network Digital Twin;

      -  NE deeply sense local traffic and fault etc.

   o  Level 3: Network Modeling and Pattern Recognition

      -  Comprehensive modeling for complex network problems;

      -  Pattern recognition to identify current network status

   o  Level 4: Network Event/Traffic Trend Prediction

3.2.  Decision and Reasoning

   o  Level 0: Fixed Control Loops

      -  The control loop functions are embbed in specific protocols/
         modules, such as IGP, DHCP, Anima BRSKI
         [I-D.ietf-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra] , and Anima ACP
         [I-D.ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane] etc.

Liu & Carpenter          Expires January 3, 2019                [Page 6]
Internet-Draft                 Networkless                     July 2018

   o  Level 1: Programmable Control Loops

      -  Algorithms (in Controller or Autonomic Service Agent) for
         specific functions and scenarios

      -  might embed some Machine Learning capabilities.

   o  Level 2: Machine Learning

      -  General control loops, driven by specific Intents (e.g.  Intent
         provides the Reward definition of the reinforcement learning)

   o  Level 3: Machine Inference

      -  Configuration/optimization/diagnostic/healing policies
         inference

   o  Level 4: (To be filled)

3.3.  Operation Interface

   o  Level 0: CLI

      -  Manual management oriented interface; batch processing within a
         machine (e.g.  Shell)

   o  Level 1: NE-level Primitive API

      -  Controller oriented NE-level API containing detailed
         configurations.  (E.g.  Openflow, Netconf/YANG)

   o  Level 2: NE-level Declarative API

      -  Orchestrator oriented NE-level declarative API

      -  Orchestrator doesn't need to care about detailed NE specific
         configurations

   o  Level 3: Network-level Declarative API

      -  User/Administrator oriented declarative API, to make the
         network be called as a service.

   o  Level 4: Machine-native Autonomous API

      -  The machines would autonomously construct the content of the
         APIs to fulfill the need of collaboration between modules.

Liu & Carpenter          Expires January 3, 2019                [Page 7]
Internet-Draft                 Networkless                     July 2018

4.  Security Considerations

   TBD.

5.  IANA Considerations

   No IANA assignment is needed.

6.  Acknowledgements

   The initial idea of this work and the "networkless" concept were from
   Xiaofei Xu.

7.  Informative References

   [Anima]    "https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/anima/about/".

   [I-D.ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane]
              Eckert, T., Behringer, M., and S. Bjarnason, "An Autonomic
              Control Plane (ACP)", draft-ietf-anima-autonomic-control-
              plane-16 (work in progress), June 2018.

   [I-D.ietf-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra]
              Pritikin, M., Richardson, M., Behringer, M., Bjarnason,
              S., and K. Watsen, "Bootstrapping Remote Secure Key
              Infrastructures (BRSKI)", draft-ietf-anima-bootstrapping-
              keyinfra-16 (work in progress), June 2018.

   [I-D.ietf-anima-reference-model]
              Behringer, M., Carpenter, B., Eckert, T., Ciavaglia, L.,
              and J. Nobre, "A Reference Model for Autonomic
              Networking", draft-ietf-anima-reference-model-06 (work in
              progress), February 2018.

   [RFC7575]  Behringer, M., Pritikin, M., Bjarnason, S., Clemm, A.,
              Carpenter, B., Jiang, S., and L. Ciavaglia, "Autonomic
              Networking: Definitions and Design Goals", RFC 7575,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7575, June 2015,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7575>.

Authors' Addresses

Liu & Carpenter          Expires January 3, 2019                [Page 8]
Internet-Draft                 Networkless                     July 2018

   Bing Liu
   Huawei Technologies
   Q14, Huawei Campus
   No.156 Beiqing Road
   Hai-Dian District, Beijing  100095
   P.R. China

   Email: leo.liubing@huawei.com

   Brian Carpenter
   Department of Computer Science
   University of Auckland
   PB 92019
   Auckland  1142
   New Zealand

   Email: brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com

Liu & Carpenter          Expires January 3, 2019                [Page 9]