Subject: [Sandbox-mailoutput] [Django development] Internal RG Review: Network Management (nmrg)

From: IETF Secretariat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2020 03:06:55 -0800

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Subject: Internal RG Review: Network Management (nmrg)
From: IETF Secretariat <[email-masked]>
To: "The IESG" <[email-masked]>, "The IAB" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2020 03:06:55 -0800

A new charter for the Network Management (nmrg) RG IRTF is being considered. 
The draft charter for this RG is provided below for your review and comment.

The IETF Secretariat

Network Management (nmrg)
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Current status: Active RG

Chairs:
  Jérôme François <[email-masked]>
  Laurent Ciavaglia <[email-masked]>

Secretaries:
  Jéferson Nobre <[email-masked]>
  Pedro Martinez-Julia <[email-masked]>

Mailing list:
  Address: [email-masked]
  To subscribe: https://irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/nmrg
  Archive: http://www.irtf.org/mail-archive/web/nmrg/

Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-irtf-nmrg/

* Charter
The Network Management Research Group (NMRG) provides a forum for researchers
to explore new technologies for the management of the Internet. In
particular, the NMRG will work on solutions for problems that are not yet
considered well understood enough for engineering work within the IETF. The
focus of the NMRG will be on management services that interface with the
current Internet management framework. This includes communication services
between management systems, which may belong to different management domains,
as well as customer-oriented management services. The NMRG is expected to
identify and document requirements, to survey possible approaches, to
consider new architectural frameworks, to provide specifications for proposed
solutions, and to prove concepts with prototype implementations that can be
tested in large-scale real-world environments. The IETF Operations and
Management Area Directors are members of the NMRG mailing list and invited to
NMRG meetings in order to ensure free flow of information in both directions,
and to avoid duplication of work with the various IETF working groups. The
group will report its progress through a publicly accessible web site and
presentations at IETF meetings. Specifications developed by the NMRG will be
submitted for publication as Experimental or Informational RFCs.

** Membership
Membership in the NMRG is open to all interested parties.

** Meetings
Regular working meetings are held about three to five times per year at
locations convenient to the majority of the participants. Working meetings
vary from hours-long working sessions (typically when held as part of IETF
meetings) to days-long meetings when co-located with conferences or events
related to network management. Regular virtual meetings are also organized on
a monthly or per-need basis.

** Research Activities (2017-2022)
The constant evolution of networking technologies, in scale, versatility, and
heterogeneity, generates operational complexity and demands novel disruptive
management solutions to address it. The NMRG will prioritize investigation of
three related topics: 1) self-driving/-managing networks, 2) intent-based
networking and 3) artificial intelligence in network management. Note: beyond
these three topics, the NMRG remains open to presentation of other topics of
interest.

While the ultimate goal of self-driving/-managing networks is fully
autonomous network operations, there will be intermediate levels where the
human users remain “in the loop” and are progressively assisted and replaced
by more and more intelligent mechanisms. Interfaces between humans and a
self-driving system are important and required to allow bidirectional
communications. On one hand, the user must be able to express guidance and
its needs without having to handle the full complexity of the underlying
infrastructures. On the other hand, users must understand the decisions which
were taken and the reasons why, be informed about the future actions the
system will initiate and also be provided with recommendations. In this area,
Intent-Based Networking (IBN) provides high-level, user-friendly abstractions
to describe business and operational goals, and alleviates the need for the
user to know and derive the technical details on how to achieve those goals.
IBN is an essential component of self-driving networks but requires the
introduction of intelligent mechanisms to properly process intents with as
little human involvement as possible. Certainly, some of those intelligent
mechanisms can rely on advances in (but should not be limited to) Artificial
Intelligence (AI). While different forms of AI have been used for decades in
network management, the combined progress in amount of data, computing power,
AI algorithms and flexible capabilities of networks in recent years makes
highly relevant to re-examine in depth the coupling between AI and network
management.

** Work plan
To investigate these topics, the initial set of work items comprises:

*** For Intent-Based Networking (IBN):
1. Document the problem statement, design goals and challenges.
Goal: describe the problem and solution spaces; identify the limits of
current technologies and methods and derive the associated research
challenges.

2. Document fundamental concepts, background, and terminology.
Goal: provide clarity and achieve a common understanding of the various
concepts, definitions and terms of what constitutes an IBN system.

3. Develop a taxonomy and document suitable means to express intents.
Goal: categorize the different forms of intents and define what constitutes a
“well-formed” intent; describe how an intent can be expressed and what can be
expressed using an intent with means such as information models, grammars,
and languages.

4. Design and specify a common architectural framework comprising
requirements, functions and techniques to realize an archetypal IBN system;
describe the lifecycle and theory of operations. Goal: determine the
elementary functional blocks of an IBN system, their interactions, inputs and
outputs; propose different techniques applicable for the different functions.

5. Define appropriate validation scenarios and use cases describing concrete
examples of intent expressions and functions. Goal: assess the quality and
completeness of specifications and evaluate intent-based systems
functionalities in experimental settings.

6. Develop implementations and proof of concepts.
Goal: demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework and its
functions; detect potential design flaws, and provide a basis for
interoperability evaluations.

7. Study the integrability and interoperability aspects of the proposed IBN
architectural framework. Goal: enable the large adoption and applicability of
IBN with existing and emerging technologies, and provide guidance on
deployment considerations.

*** For Artificial Intelligence in Network Management (AI-NM):
1. Investigate, organize and document the major research challenges in AI for
Network Management. Goal: provide a reference document which defines the
different forms and usages of AI in network management and articulates the
different goals, challenges, requirements and research directions.

2. Organize and animate a series of practical Network Management AI
challenges/competitions. Goal: promote experimental research, practical
knowledge and validation of AI techniques to solve network management
problems and foster exchanges and cross-participation of both AI and Network
Management specialists.

3. Support discussion and collaboration on techniques, (meta-)data,
experimentations and best practises for the use and integration of AI with
networking management approaches. Goal: offer a forum for the Network
Management AI community to report on advances, developments and key results
and introduce its efforts to the IETF. Note: Applicability of AI techniques
for IBN functionalities and mechanisms is an example of potential joint
activity between the Network Management AI and IBN realms.

*** For Self-Driving/-Managing Networks (SD/MN):
1. Support discussion to develop a common understanding of the
problem-solution space on new architectural frameworks, articulate related
requirements, survey and propose possible novel approaches. Goal: offer a
venue for the Network Management community to debate on current Internet
management frameworks and new proposals, and how to adapt and anticipate on
needs, technologies and ecosystem evolution.

2. Investigate and document reference models and de-facto best practises.
Goal: describe how various realms and components, such as intent-based
functionality, automation and zero-touch capabilities, or else algorithmic
approaches (AI or non-AI based), compose together to form modern,
comprehensive and coherent management solutions.

Milestones: