The granularity of intent

This Network Intent Composition project will enable the controller to manage and direct network services and network resources based on describing the “Intent” for network behaviors and network policies. Intents are described to the controller through a new NorthBound Interface, which provides generalized and abstracted policy semantics instead of Openflow-like flow rules. The Intent based NBI allows for a descriptive way to get what is desired from the infrastructure, unlike the current SDN interfaces which are based on describing how to provide different services.”
Network Intent Composition
on Open Daylight.

The diagram in yesterday’s blog (see below) struck me as having parallels with the intent model of network management with its use of granularity and abstraction.

The idea of intent is to allow the OSS to operate at the Minimum Viable Data level (one that is devoid of any vendor-specific notation) and delegate responsibility to the lower-level controllers to handle the “perfect” data level (which the controller will hopefully be able to maintain).

It also struck me that it’s likely that someone has probably already started working on a language of intent, one that I had not yet come across. I started by crossing YANG with intent in an Internet search and sure enough, there is already an Open Daylight project underway.

I also came across this Slideshare that I thought you might find interesting.

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