Intent Classification
RFC 9316

Received changes through RFC Editor sync (created alias RFC 9316, changed abstract to 'Intent is an abstract, high-level policy used to operate a network. An intent-based management system includes an interface for users to input requests and an engine to translate the intents into the network configuration and manage their life cycle.

This document mostly discusses the concept of network intents, but other types of intents are also considered. Specifically, this document highlights stakeholder perspectives of intent, methods to classify and encode intent, and the associated intent taxonomy; it also defines relevant intent terms where necessary, provides a foundation for intent-related research, and facilitates solution development.

This document is a product of the IRTF Network Management Research Group (NMRG).', changed pages to 35, changed standardization level to Informational, changed state to RFC, added RFC published event at 2022-10-21, changed IRTF state to Published RFC)

(Via drafts-eval@iana.org): IESG/Authors/ISE:

The IANA Functions Operator has reviewed draft-irtf-nmrg-ibn-intent-classification-08 and has the following comments:

We understand that this document doesn't require any registry actions.

While it's often helpful for a document's IANA Considerations section to remain in place upon publication even if there are no actions, if the authors strongly prefer to remove it, we do not object.

If this assessment is not accurate, please respond as soon as possible.

For definitions of IANA review states, please see:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/help/state/draft/iana-review

Thank you,

Amanda Baber
IANA Operations Manager

[Ballot comment]
It seems to me that draft-irtf-nmrg-ibn-concepts-definitions should be a normative reference. Or actually it's not clear to me why these are split up into two different drafts anyway.

[Ballot comment]
I like this document a lot. This isn't my area of expertise, but I did learn a lot from reading through it.

I do have two questions, but they are absolutely comment-level questions. Just Do The Right Thing.

* First, and this may be more of a question for Colin or the IRSG, but in this text

  The document represents the consensus of the RG. During the
  document's lifecycle it received many positive expressions of support
  and detailed reviews beyond the authors. Only in the last call period
                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  it received more than 12 positive expressions of support and more
  than 5 detailed reviews. It is published for informational purposes.

This is, of course, an IRTF-stream document, and Last Call is a well-defined IETF-stream thing with no obvious counterpart in https://datatracker.ietf.org/help/state/draft/irtf.

IETF working groups often have "working group last call", and I think what you're talking about is “research group last call”, which is one of our states.

Colin, et. al., does this matter?

Nit: I think I know what you mean with “Only in the last call period”, but that is ambiguous. I’d suggest dropping “Only”, because you’re describing what happened in the research group last call, right?.

Nit: I don’t remember seeing this level of detail about expressions of support in other IRTF stream documents, but I do find that useful - other reviewers may have different thoughts.

* Second, when looking at these two sections,

10. Contributors

  The following people all contributed to creating this document:

  Xueyuan Sun, China Telecom
  Will (Shucheng) Liu, Huawei
  Ying Chen, China Unicom
  John Strassner, Huawei
  Weiping Xu, Huawei
  Richard Meade, Huawei

11. Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Xueyuan Sun from China Telecom for significant
  contributions to this document, and to Will (Shucheng) Liu from
  Huawei for contributions and guidance.

  This document has benefited from reviews, suggestions, comments and
  proposed text provided by the following members, listed in
  alphabetical order: Mehdi Bezahaf, Brian E Carpenter, Laurent
  Ciavaglia, Benoit Claise, Alexander Clemm, Yehia Elkhatib, Jerome
  Francois, Pedro Andres Aranda Gutierrez, Daniel King, Branislav
  Meandzija, Bob Natale, Juergen Schoenwaelder, Xiaolin Song, Jeff
  Tantsura.

  We thank to Barbara Martini, Walter Cerroni, Molka Gharbaoui, Davide
  Borsatti, for contributing with their 'A multi-level approach to
  IBN' PoC demonstration a first attempt to adopt the intent
  classification methodology.

I don’t understand what “contributed to creating this document” means in 10, if the first two “contributors” are also named in acknowledgements. I might suggest either having “significant contributors” in 10, and others included in 11, OR move the other four in 10 to 11, and describe their contributions more clearly.

But I’m confused enough that I’m not sure either of those suggestions captures what you mean in 10 and 11. I'm not sure if 10 is "contributed ideas", or "contributed significant text to a -00 draft" so the mention of Xueyuan and Will in 11 means they kept contributing text to subsequent revisions, or something else.

Seriously, I'm guessing. Could you help me understand?

[Ballot comment]
I like this document a lot. This isn't my area of expertise, but I did learn a lot from reading through it.

I do have two questions, but they are absolutely comment-level questions. Just Do The Right Thing.

* First, and this may be more of a question for Colin or the IRSG, but in this text

  The document represents the consensus of the RG. During the
  document's lifecycle it received many positive expressions of support
  and detailed reviews beyond the authors. Only in the last call period
                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  it received more than 12 positive expressions of support and more
  than 5 detailed reviews. It is published for informational purposes.

This is, of course, an IRTF-stream document, and Last Call is a well-defined IETF-stream thing with no obvious counterpart in https://datatracker.ietf.org/help/state/draft/irtf.

IETF working groups often have "working group last call", and I think what you're talking about is “research group last call”, which is one of our states.

Colin, et. al., does this matter?

Nit: I think I know what you mean with “Only in the last call period”, but that is ambiguous. I’d suggest dropping “Only”, because you’re describing what happened in the research group last call, right?.

Nit: I don’t remember seeing this level of detail about expressions of support in other IRTF stream documents, but I do find that useful - other reviewers may have different thoughts.

* Second, when looking at these two sections,

10. Contributors

  The following people all contributed to creating this document:

  Xueyuan Sun, China Telecom
  Will (Shucheng) Liu, Huawei
  Ying Chen, China Unicom
  John Strassner, Huawei
  Weiping Xu, Huawei
  Richard Meade, Huawei

11. Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Xueyuan Sun from China Telecom for significant
  contributions to this document, and to Will (Shucheng) Liu from
  Huawei for contributions and guidance.

  This document has benefited from reviews, suggestions, comments and
  proposed text provided by the following members, listed in
  alphabetical order: Mehdi Bezahaf, Brian E Carpenter, Laurent
  Ciavaglia, Benoit Claise, Alexander Clemm, Yehia Elkhatib, Jerome
  Francois, Pedro Andres Aranda Gutierrez, Daniel King, Branislav
  Meandzija, Bob Natale, Juergen Schoenwaelder, Xiaolin Song, Jeff
  Tantsura.

  We thank to Barbara Martini, Walter Cerroni, Molka Gharbaoui, Davide
  Borsatti, for contributing with their 'A multi-level approach to
  IBN' PoC demonstration a first attempt to adopt the intent
  classification methodology.

I don’t understand what “contributed to creating this document” means in 10, if the first two “contributors” are also named in acknowledgements. I might suggest either having “significant contributors” in 10, and others included in 11, OR move the other four in 10 to 11, and describe their contributions more clearly.

But I’m confused enough that I’m not sure either of those suggestions captures what you mean in 10 and 11. I'm not sure if 10 is "contributed ideas", or "contributed significant text to a -00 draft" so the mention of Xueyuan and Will means they kept contributing text to subsequent revisions, or something else.

Could you help me understand?

[Ballot comment]
The draft reads to me as a highly abstract document. I was unable to appreciate its usefulness without examples--that is entire my own fault due to my lack of knowledge on this specific topic.

Jeffrey He reviewed -05 for the IRSG (this will be forwarded to the authors and RG soon). A revised draft is needed to address his comments.

Request for posting confirmation emailed to previous authors: Adriana Olariu , Chen Li , Diego Lopez , Jeferson Nobre , Olga Havel , Pedro Martinez-Julia , Will LIU , irtf-chair@irtf.org, nmrg-chairs@ietf.org

Shepherd writeup (on version -03, entered on 09-08-2021:
- RG last call initiated on 23-02-2021, concluded on 17-03-2021
- The document received several reviews (5+) and comments during the last call period. The review comments and replies from the authors are available in the NMRG mailing list archives (subject line: “RG Last Call for draft-irtf-nmrg-ibn-intent-classification”)
- Document versions and diffs are available at: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-irtf-nmrg-ibn-intent-classification/
- Authors have been diligent and thorough in addressing comments raised by the RG through the different versions as RG document (from -00 to current -03), seeking consensus and technical improvement of the content and form.
- After conclusion of the RG last call, authors have addressed all pending comments. The document is stable; no oppositions or disagreements from the RG participants on the publication of this work as an IRTF RFC have been expressed during and after the RG last call. The current version of the document represents the consensus of the RG.
- The document will have to be updated (e.g. in IRSG review) to comply with guidelines for IRTF RFCs, specifically (citing RFC 5743, https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5743#page-3)
o There must be a statement in the abstract identifying it as the product of the RG
o There must be a paragraph near the beginning (for example, in the introduction) describing the level of support for publication. Example text might read: "this document represents the consensus of the FOOBAR RG" or "the views in this document were considered controversial by the FOOBAR RG but the RG reached a consensus that the document should still be published".
o The breadth of review the document has received must also be noted. For example, was this document read by all the active contributors, only three people, or folks who are not "in" the RG but are expert in the area?
o It must also be very clear throughout the document that it is not an IETF product and is not a standard.

The authors agreed to update the document to address the above comment when the document will enter IRSG review.

Request for posting confirmation emailed to previous authors: Adriana Olariu , Chen Li , Diego Lopez , Jeferson Nobre , Olga Havel , Pedro Martinez-Julia , Will LIU

Request for posting confirmation emailed to previous authors: Adriana Olariu , Chen Li , Diego Lopez , Jeferson Nobre , Olga Havel , Pedro Martinez-Julia , Will LIU

Request for posting confirmation emailed to previous authors: Adriana Olariu , Will LIU , Pedro Martinez-Julia , Jeferson Nobre , Chen Li , Diego Lopez , Olga Havel