Combining Autonomic and Intent-Based Networking.

Autonomic Networking has long been a topic for standardization at the IETF. The first phase of standardization was mostly concerned with providing infrastructural foundations: Autonomic and secure enrollment of devices into a network domain and establishment of an autonomic control plane to support secure communication between autonomic service agents, on top of which actual autonomic functionality could subsequently be built. At the same time, Intent-Based Networking has been emerging as a new management paradigm, concerned with managing networks by defining outcomes without specifying how they might be achieved, which could in turn require autonomic functionality. In this position paper we outline ways in which Autonomic and Intent-Based Networking can complement one another and explore the role that interoperability and standards can play in this space. From this, we outline gaps and identify opportunities in current IETF standardization and offer our conclusions regarding which directions IETF standardization may take in the future.