Network Working Group B. Liu
Internet-Draft Huawei Technologies
Intended status: Informational B. Carpenter
Expires: January 3, 2019 Univ. of Auckland
July 2, 2018

Roadmap to a Networkless World
draft-liu-nmrg-networkless-roadmap-00

Abstract

This draft aims to illustrate possible approaches to make network management and operations more autonomic in several aspects. The ultimate goal is that the network could run all by itself, so that users/administrators just feel like there isn't a network to take care of at all (a.k.a. "Networkless"). The approaches are described in a form of different levels (inspired by the Self-Driven Car levels). The higher the level is, the more autonomic management capabilities the network could have.

Please note that although some specific technologies are categorized into different levels, it is not the draft's intent to rank them; rather, this draft is more about discussing what's the possible next stage and what's the ultimate vision. Hopefully, this draft could collect people's consensus in the industry and provide guidance for future technology developments.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

As the network is evolving rapidly, the system is becoming more and more complex; thus managing a network is more and more challenging. It has been a common feeling in the industry that the Opex of running networks is becoming a vital pain point. To address the management complexity challenges, there are new technologies emerging. For example, Autonomic Networking [RFC7575], which is under standardization in IETF Anima working group [Anima], is following an approach to allow the network elements do more management related things by themselves; the SDN, which has been significantly improved the network service delivery efficiency in some scenarios; and more recently, the Intent-Based Network concept, which focuses more on the operational simplicity perspective, to allow users/administrators controll the network system in a radically simple way (a.k.a. Intent-driven, rather than detailed configurations).

This draft is not proposing a new technology, rather, this draft collects available tecnologies and illustrates possible future technologies and the final effect to network users/administrators. The ultimate goal is that the network could run all by itself, so that users/administrators just feel like there isn't a network to take care of at all (a.k.a. "Networkless").

In Section 2, the network management is divided into several aspect for discussion, in a administrator perspective. In each aspect there are automation/autonomicity levels to illustrate past (Level 0), current state of art (Level 1) and possible future technologies (Level 2-4). Section 3 focuses on some common and vital capabilities the network system needs to have, in order to support the goals described in Section 2.

2. Goals of Networkless

2.1. Self-Organization Levels

Self-organization represents the ability that network nelements could autonomically connect with each other, form domains, or even decide the topology/hierarchy/architecture.

2.2. Self-Configuration Levels

2.3. Self-Optimization and Levels

This sub-section focuses on traffic forwarding performance of the network, mainly include path selection and QoS related issues.

2.4. Self-Diagnostic Levels

This sub-section focuses on network fault diagnostic.

2.5. Self-Healing Levels

3. Key Capablities to Achieve Networkless

3.1. Network Perception

3.2. Decision and Reasoning

3.3. Operation Interface

4. Security Considerations

TBD.

5. IANA Considerations

No IANA assignment is needed.

6. Acknowledgements

The initial idea of this work and the "networkless" concept were from Xiaofei Xu.

7. Informative References

[Anima] "https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/anima/about/"
[I-D.ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane] Eckert, T., Behringer, M. and S. Bjarnason, "An Autonomic Control Plane (ACP)", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-anima-autonomic-control-plane-16, June 2018.
[I-D.ietf-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra] Pritikin, M., Richardson, M., Behringer, M., Bjarnason, S. and K. Watsen, "Bootstrapping Remote Secure Key Infrastructures (BRSKI)", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-anima-bootstrapping-keyinfra-16, June 2018.
[I-D.ietf-anima-reference-model] Behringer, M., Carpenter, B., Eckert, T., Ciavaglia, L. and J. Nobre, "A Reference Model for Autonomic Networking", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-anima-reference-model-06, February 2018.
[RFC7575] Behringer, M., Pritikin, M., Bjarnason, S., Clemm, A., Carpenter, B., Jiang, S. and L. Ciavaglia, "Autonomic Networking: Definitions and Design Goals", RFC 7575, DOI 10.17487/RFC7575, June 2015.

Authors' Addresses

Bing Liu Huawei Technologies Q14, Huawei Campus No.156 Beiqing Road Hai-Dian District, Beijing, 100095 P.R. China EMail: leo.liubing@huawei.com
Brian Carpenter Department of Computer Science University of Auckland PB 92019 Auckland, 1142 New Zealand EMail: brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com