Charting an Intent Driven Network

TL;DR

This paper proposes an intent-driven networking approach where applications declare their goals to the network, enabling better optimization and resource management by bridging the gap between application purposes and network control.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of intent-driven networking and sketches a practical, incremental design for integrating this approach into current Internet infrastructure.

Findings

Enables network to optimize based on application intent

Improves resource allocation and network efficiency

Provides a step towards more intelligent, purpose-aware networks

Abstract

The current strong divide between applications and the network control plane is desirable for many reasons; but a downside is that the network is kept in the dark regarding the ultimate purposes and intentions of applications and, as a result, is unable to optimize for these. An alternative approach, explored in this paper, is for applications to declare to the network their abstract intents and assumptions; e.g. "this is a Tweet", or "this application will run within a local domain". Such an enriched semantic has the potential to enable the network better to fulfill application intent, while also helping optimize network resource usage across applications. We refer to this approach as 'intent driven networking' (IDN), and we sketch an incrementally-deployable design to serve as a stepping stone towards a practical realization of the IDN concept within today's Internet.