Minutes interim-2019-nmrg-07: Fri 09:30
minutes-interim-2019-nmrg-07-201907260930-00

NMRG 55th meeting
Interim meeting, ETS Montreal, Canada
Friday 26-07-2019 09:30-16:30 EDT

* Participants (14 + 3):
. on-site: Laurent Ciavaglia (Nokia, NMRG co-chair), Mohamed-Faten zhani (ETS,
host), Will Liuscheng (Huawei), Sabine Randriamasy (Nokia), Diego Lopez
(Telefonica), Mehdi Bezahaf (Lancaster University), Benoit Claise (Cisco), Yan
Shen (Huawei), Santosh Pallagatti (Vmware), Alain April (ETS), Diala Naboulsi
(ETS), Kaiwen Zhang (ETS), Aris Leivadeas (ETS), Mahes Maheswaran (McGill
University) . remote: Alexander Clemm (Futurewei), Raghavendra Mahalingappa
(Ericsson), Walter Cerroni (University of Bologna)

* Meeting notes

** Summary:
   IBN is a complex topic and work on intent cassification is important to
   bring clarity and an agreed terminology to the domain. The use case exercise
   was found useful to help clarify such intent categories, involved
   actors/audiences, techonologies and domain knowledge. Graphs as a tool to
   represent various levels of intents and their refinment was proposed and
   judged a useful path to document further. General consensus on structural
   approach to intent expression based on functional and operation parts.

** Agenda:
9h30-10h - Welcome and coffee

10h-12h - Morning session
. Introduction, Workshop Chairs (Faten and Laurent) ~5 min.
. FlexNGIA: A Flexible Internet Architecture for the Next-Generation Tactile
Internet, Mohamed-Faten Zhani ~25 min.

Santosh: now putting agent in each node, and so maintain states at every node?
complexity Mehdi: suppose route change, how working? e.g. for caching Will: ?
Mehdi: link with intent: how come to the system? live, from the application,
from the user? Laurent: example of presentaion in COIN RG on video optimization
https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/105/materials/slides-105-coinrg-5-jiang-video-analytics-and--coin-01
Discussion on who is expressing the intents (user, applications, operator)
Diego: fascination (and doubtful) with Google Cloud Network. Google as an
operator... e.g. Google fiber stopped. "impossible" to replicate Google Cloud
NEtwork for more general networks at global scale. Diala: centralized controler
at the scale of globla infrastructure?

. Working on intent examples
Alain: infrasteuctrure as code quite popular, use intents as code...
Diego: at least two levels of intents: network operation, network service.
intent expressed as a graph Laurent: partly agree. at what level/stage the
"topological" dimension should be captured. Diego: the main goal of the intent
is connectivity. The connectivity "parameter" shall be captured and be
represented in different level of abstraction, corresponding to the different
level of the intent refinment Benoit: mapping intent. high-level Language
should be developed? Alain: expertise is needed to map the intent,
(infrastructure as code). Expert systems,  Customs don't do the detailed work.
Mehdi: ? Alex: discuss tradeoff  between parameters (e.g., latency,
reliability) and mediate between them (costs). Alain: layer should take
decision like expert systems Toerless: lowest level/layer of standardized
intent Diego: play the levels of "topology" abstraction, representation detail.
Alain: consider the standards in the picture, putting constraints Laurent:
define the actors, service intent expressed by the user and there is the
operator (different business perspective, operational point of view). Mehdi:
negociation to define the features, multiple request in the same intent?
Laurent: iterative process?, what should we ask for? functional part (network
function), performance parameters (latency...) Laurent: Conclusion actors: do
we agree to have only 2 actors? Benoit: ? Toerless: Yang language? Diego: ?
Toerless:conditinality and timing Mahes: lifetime of intent? how does the
impact the performance, resource consumption. Alex: scope and lifetime of the
intent should be defined. Discussion on compatibility between intent
temporality (instant request) and system response capability (SLA)

12h-13h - Lunch break

13h-14h30 - Afternoon session I
. A word from Patrick Cardinal, Head of Department of Software and IT
Engineering ~5min. . Intent examples (continued)

Intent exmaples from Mehdi
Alex: service profiles
Sabine: qualitative parameters
Mehdi presented the two use cases
Laurent: analyzed the 2 use cases : one from user perspective and the other
from operator perspectives. Mahes: The need to categorize the intent Sabine:
just like what happens in a company : the boss provides instructions Laurent:
high-level experession of the intent. Qualittative metrics vs. quantitative
Laurent: "user vocabulary/name space" vs. "system vocabulary space", mapping
function between the two and properties of the function: powerful, qualitative,
automatic. ontology/semnatics. evolution of the user / system vocabulary means
to translate qualitative to quantitative exposure framework graph as a key tool
for representation of the different aspects of intent (expression, refinment,
...) "zooming" graph -> refinement process, different audiences and information
added as you go frmo one level to another different audiences bring different
domain kwoledge that need to be captured in the graph Laurent: Level at which
you are looking at the graph Diego: the graph represents the relationship
(place and there are ways to get from one place to another) Benoit:
decomposition, connectivity... Laurent: making a good intent system put
requirements on what (functionality) the system can provide (e.g. ability to
parse natural language) Mehdi: Sabine: android intent, Look into TAPS working
group (they work on intents).

. Architecture discussion

14h30-15h - Coffee break

15h-16h30 - Afternoon session II
. Architecture discussion (continued)

. Meeting conclusions, Chairs and participants

Mehdi: complex problem space. decompose into smaller problems. invesitgate
different functionalities. Faten: useful dicussion on the use cases and graph
representation. priority on the classification of intent levels of abstraction
and actors/roles. Will: received several comments on the ID and update the
work. Sabine: need better models for consensus. still open problem but more
aspects considered and added, better understanding. Diego: re-think, re-shape
the drafts with inclusion of the graph discussion. liked the language presented
by Arthur (NMRG54) and have it available to play with in the NMRG. (note for
myself: extend and connect the tool with the intent classification, how support
it) Benoit: different backgrounds. new topic == terminology is first discussion
and time-consuming. Produce good first RFCs and spawn futher works (eg. WG).
Graph aspect step in the good direction. Archietcture would be good product.
Willing to write one or two drafts, bottom up based on the discussion and
implementation-based. Producing the building blocks for closed-loop
intent-based operations. Laurent: good and needed discussions. feel genreal
consensus on the strucutral appraoch to intent expression (functional and
operational part). like the discussion on the use of graphs and could be a good
path to firther explore as tool in support of intent refinement and
transformation.

*********************
* Meeting information

* RG Chair:
   Laurent Ciavaglia <laurent.ciavaglia@nokia.com>
   Jéröme François <jerome.francois@inria.fr>

* Meeting Location:
  ÉTS Montreal
  1100 Notre-Dame St W, Montreal, QC H3C 1K3, Canada
  Map: https://goo.gl/maps/kGDP9wCVBJahaALVA
  4th Floor
  Department of Software and IT Engineering
  Room A4458 (the room is inside the department)
  How to access: From ETS entrance, take the elevators that are next to the
  Cafeteria. Go to 4th floor and go to the department of Software and IT
  Engineering.

* Registration:
  Participation is free, registration is appreciated:
  https://doodle.com/poll/vwysqkq4h34w6c5f

* Remote participation:
  https://ietf.webex.com/ietf/j.php?MTID=m81b3d749f415e5456d8161b1db4eedba

* Useful links:
   Agenda and Materials:
   https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/interim-2019-nmrg-07/session/nmrg
   Etherpad: https://etherpad.tools.ietf.org/p/nmrg-interim-20190726

* Agenda:
  ** The meeting will focus on Intent Based Networking (IBN) and on making
  progress on the current work items, tentatively covering:
     - Concepts definition and terminology
     - Intent examples and validation scenarios, use cases
     - Architecture: requirements, principles, properties, functions/services,
     enablers, theory of operations, interworking/integration with other
     frameworks, human-network interface...

  ** Pleased come prepared:
     - Read the active Internet Drafts
       https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-clemm-nmrg-dist-intent/
       https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-li-nmrg-intent-classification/
       https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-sun-nmrg-intent-framework/

     - Think about examples of intents and how to validate them (on a scenario,
     on a logical flow, who are the actors/roles involved...)

  ** Agenda:
         9h30-10h - Welcome and coffee

         10h-12h - Morning session
         . Introduction, Workshop Chairs (Faten and Laurent) ~5 min.
         . FlexNGIA: A Flexible Internet Architecture for the Next-Generation
         Tactile Internet, Mohamed-Faten Zhani ~25 min. . Working on intent
         examples

         12h-13h - Lunch break

         13h-14h30 - Afternoon session I
         . A word from Patrick Cardinal, Head of Department of Software and IT
         Engineering ~5min. . Intent examples (continued) . Architecture
         discussion

         14h30-15h - Coffee break

         15h-16h30 - Afternoon session II
         . Architecture discussion (continued)
         . Meeting conclusions, Chairs and participants