“Intent doesn’t change as a result of a link going down, a server crashing, changing cloud providers, changing switch vendors, upgrading firmware or any other change to the infrastructure.”
David Lenrow, chair of the ONF Northbound Working Group, who recently hosted the Intent-based Summit, which has passed a proposal to commence work on the Network Intent Composition (NIC).
Policy control is already a well-established feature in large networks but in dynamically evolving and subscriber-centric networks (ie virtualised networks), real-time policy management becomes an even more essential feature. Policy engines are responsible for implementing / enforcing policy rules that relate to how a network or customer service is configured.
Policy control can include many parameters including service quality (QoS) per congestion level, charging rules, resource allocation, service tiers / quotas, admission control and can be applied to subscribers, devices, locations, networks, applications and more.
Existing policy servers can take (and deliver) information feeds from a variety of different sources, including OSS and BSS as well as many other operational tools. A slightly revised policy control concept, referred to as Network Intent, is beginning to take shape. If it continues to gain momentum, it is likely to impact the way that virtualised networks are managed, and in turn, how OSS and related tools are configured. Intent networking takes the concept of policies and abstracts them to become platform / vendor / network independent, allowing a single intent to be delivered across an entire network.
BTW. Heavy Reading’s White Paper by Graham Finnie is definitely worth a review in relation to how policy management may impact virtualised networking concepts such as SDN.