Autonomic Networking Integrated Model and Approach (anima)

WG Name Autonomic Networking Integrated Model and Approach
Acronym anima
Area Operations and Management Area (ops)
State Active
Charter charter-ietf-anima-02 Approved
Document dependencies
Additional resources Issue tracker, Wiki, Zulip Stream
Personnel Chairs Sheng Jiang, Toerless Eckert
Area Director Mahesh Jethanandani
Tech Advisor Nancy Cam-Winget
Delegates Michael Richardson, Mike McBride
Secretary Michael Richardson
Liaison Contacts Sheng Jiang, Toerless Eckert
Mailing list Address anima@ietf.org
To subscribe https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/anima
Archive https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/anima/
Chat Room address https://zulip.ietf.org/#narrow/stream/anima

Charter for Working Group

The Autonomic Networking Integrated Model and Approach (ANIMA) working group develops and maintains specifications and documentation for interoperable protocols and procedures for automated network management and control of professionally-managed networks.

The vision is a network that configures, heals, optimizes and protects itself. The strategy is the incremental introduction of components to smoothly evolve existing and new networks accordingly.

ANIMA work will rely on the framework described in draft-ietf-anima-reference-model already approved for publication. Work not related to this framework is welcome for review, but WG adoption of such work requires explicit rechartering. The two concrete areas of the reference model are (1) the Autonomic Networking Infrastructure (ANI), and (2) Autonomic Functions (AF) built from software modules called Autonomic Service Agents (ASA).

The ANI is specified through prior ANIMA work. It is composed of the Autonomic Control Plane (ACP; RFC 8368), Bootstrap over Secure Key Infrastructures (BRSKI) including Vouchers (RFC8366), and the Generic Autonomic Signaling Protocol (GRASP). ANIMA will work on closing gaps and extending the ANI and its components.

ANIMA will start to define Autonomic Functions (AF) to enable service automation in networks; it will also work on generic aspects of ASA including design guidelines and lifecycle management, coordination and dependency management.

The reference model also discusses Intent, but ANIMA will not work on this without explicit rechartering. It will rely on the Network Management Research Group (NMRG) to define the next steps for this topic. ANIMA will coordinate with other IETF and IRTF groups as needed.

The scope of possible work items are (additional works are subject to extra approval from the responsible AD):

  • Extensions to the ANI, including variations of ANI deployment (e.g. in virtualised environments), information distribution within an AN, ANI OAMP interfaces (Operations, Administration, Management, Provisioning), interaction with YANG-based mechanisms, defining the domain boundary and membership management of the domain.

  • Support for Autonomic Service Agents, including design and implementation guidelines for ASAs, life cycle management, authorization and coordination of ASA.

  • BRSKI features, including proxies, enrollment, adaptions over various network protocols, variations of voucher formats.

  • Generic use cases of Autonomic Network and new GRASP extensions/options for them, including bulk transfer, DNS-SD interworking, autonomic resource management, autonomic SLA assurance, autonomic multi-tenant management, autonomic network measurement.

  • Integration with Network Operations Centers (NOCs), including autonomic discovery/connectivity to NOC, YANG-based ANI/ASA management by the NOC and reporting AF from node to NOC.

Milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Jul 2020 Recharter or close the WG
Mar 2020 Submit Guidelines for Developing Autonomic Service Agents to the IESG
Mar 2020 Submit Lifecycle and Management of Autonomic Service Agents to the IESG
Dec 2019 Submit Constrained Join Proxy for Bootstrapping Protocols to the IESG
Dec 2019 Submit Constrained Voucher Artifacts for Bootstrapping Protocols to the IESG
Nov 2019 Submit Information distribution over GRASP to the IESG