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Refining Network Intents for Self-Driving Networks

Authors:

Arthur Selle Jacobs,

Ricardo José Pfitscher,

Ronaldo Alves Ferreira, and

Lisandro Zambenedetti GranvilleAuthors Info & Claims

SelfDN 2018: Proceedings of the Afternoon Workshop on Self-Driving Networks

August 2018

Pages 15 - 21

https://doi.org/10.1145/3229584.3229590

Published: 07 August 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) offer an opportunity for the adoption of self-driving networks. However, network operators or home-network users still do not have the right tools to exploit these new advancements in AI, since they have to rely on low-level languages to specify network policies. Intent-based networking (IBN) allows operators to specify high-level policies that dictate how the network should behave without worrying how they are translated into configuration commands in the network devices. However, the existing research proposals for IBN fail to exploit the knowledge and feedback of the network operator to validate or improve the translation of intents. In this paper, we introduce a novel intent-refinement process that uses machine learning and feedback from the operator to translate the operator's utterances into network configurations. Our refinement process uses a sequence-to-sequence learning model to extract intents from natural language and the feedback from the operator to improve learning. The key insight of our process is an intermediate representation that resembles natural language that is suitable to collect feedback from the operator but is structured enough to facilitate precise translations. Our prototype interacts with a network operator using natural language and translates the operator input to the intermediate representation before translating to SDN rules. Our experimental results show that our process achieves a correlation coefficient squared (i.e., R-squared) of 0.99 for a dataset with 5000 entries and the operator feedback significantly improves the accuracy of our model.

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Cited By

Boutouchent AMeridja AKardjadja YMaia AGhamri-Doudane YKoudil MGlitho RElbiaze H(2024)AMANOS: An Intent-Driven Management and Orchestration System for Next-Generation Cloud-Native NetworksIEEE Communications Magazine10.1109/MCOM.003.230036762:6(42-49)Online publication date: Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.003.2300367
Wyszkowski PKienig JZieliński KCzekierda ŁZawadzki M(2024)Comprehensive Tutorial on the Organization of a Standards-Aligned Network Slice/Subnet Design Process and Opportunities for Its AutomationIEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials10.1109/COMST.2023.334124926:2(1386-1445)Online publication date: Oct-2025
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Garzón CRíos-Guiral SLeal EGutiérrez SBotero J(2024)P4 Cybersecurity Solutions: Taxonomy and Open ChallengesIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.334733212(6376-6399)Online publication date: 2024
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Index Terms

Refining Network Intents for Self-Driving Networks
1. Networks
  1. Network services
    1. Network management

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cover image ACM Conferences

SelfDN 2018: Proceedings of the Afternoon Workshop on Self-Driving Networks

August 2018

48 pages

ISBN:9781450359146

DOI:10.1145/3229584

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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New York, NY, United States

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Published: 07 August 2018

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SIGCOMM

SIGCOMM '18: ACM SIGCOMM 2018 Conference

August 24, 2018

Budapest, Hungary

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Cited By

Boutouchent AMeridja AKardjadja YMaia AGhamri-Doudane YKoudil MGlitho RElbiaze H(2024)AMANOS: An Intent-Driven Management and Orchestration System for Next-Generation Cloud-Native NetworksIEEE Communications Magazine10.1109/MCOM.003.230036762:6(42-49)Online publication date: Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.003.2300367
Wyszkowski PKienig JZieliński KCzekierda ŁZawadzki M(2024)Comprehensive Tutorial on the Organization of a Standards-Aligned Network Slice/Subnet Design Process and Opportunities for Its AutomationIEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials10.1109/COMST.2023.334124926:2(1386-1445)Online publication date: Oct-2025
https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2023.3341249
Garzón CRíos-Guiral SLeal EGutiérrez SBotero J(2024)P4 Cybersecurity Solutions: Taxonomy and Open ChallengesIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.334733212(6376-6399)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3347332
de Oliveira NMedeiros DMoraes IAndreonni MMattos D(2024)Towards intent-based management for Open Radio Access Networks: an agile framework for detecting service-level agreement conflictsAnnals of Telecommunications10.1007/s12243-024-01035-3Online publication date: 10-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12243-024-01035-3
Bringhenti DMarchetto GSisto RValenza F(2023)Automation for Network Security Configuration: State of the Art and Research TrendsACM Computing Surveys10.1145/361640156:3(1-37)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3616401
Sharma YBhamare DSastry NJavadi BBuyya R(2023)SLA Management in Intent-Driven Service Management Systems: A Taxonomy and Future DirectionsACM Computing Surveys10.1145/358933955:13s(1-38)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3589339
Morichetta ASpring NRaith PDustdar S(2023)Intent-based Management for the Distributed Computing Continuum2023 IEEE International Conference on Service-Oriented System Engineering (SOSE)10.1109/SOSE58276.2023.00035(239-249)Online publication date: Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SOSE58276.2023.00035
He TToosi AAkbari NIslam MCheema M(2023)An Intent-based Framework for Vehicular Edge Computing2023 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom)10.1109/PERCOM56429.2023.10099081(121-130)Online publication date: 13-Mar-2023
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Cesila CPinto RMayer KEscallón-Portilla AMello DArantes DRothenberg C(2023)Chat-IBN-RASA: Building an Intent Translator for Packet-Optical Networks based on RASA2023 IEEE 9th International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft)10.1109/NetSoft57336.2023.10175491(534-538)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
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Bringhenti DSisto RValenza F(2023)Towards Security Automation in Virtual Networks2023 IEEE 9th International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft)10.1109/NetSoft57336.2023.10175459(326-331)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
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