Connections

The concept of Software Defined Network (SDN) enables the programming of network behavior in a centrally controlled manner using open standard APIs. With the addition of Segment Routing (SR) in IPv6 (SRv6), new ways to program the packet processing in the network using the segment identifier (SID) is standardized at the IETF. Further this talk will introduce you to the need for fine grained network service provisioning to allow differentiated service treatment in network via Application-aware Networking (APN). 

The IETF held a BOF at IETF109 called MADINAS - MAC Address Device Identification for Network and Application Services.  IEEE plans and many vendors are implementing new mechanisms to randomize device MAC addresses. This is primarily for privacy reasons: even in encrypted WiFi and 802.15.4 networks, the layer-2 MAC address are not encrypted as they are needed as part of the encryption mechanism. This talk deals with the device identity challenge: how can we effectively replace lists of MAC addresses as a major configuration element?  What kind of higher-level device identities are available, and what changes are necessary to leverage this effort?

At the highest level, intent is a declarative specification of the desired outcome. And the desired outcome is complete automation of the whole network service life-cycle, which consists of the following phases: design (intent consumption), build (intent modeling), deploy (intent instantiation), validate (continues intent validation). Intent defines the “what” not the “how”. Intent is dynamic, and a fundamental requirement of an IBN system is that it should be capable of ensuring that intent’s expectations are met in the presence of change.

In order to enforce that intent expectations are met, the IBNS has to be the single source of truth (regarding the intended state of both your infrastructure and your business rules) that one can programmatically reason about in the presence of change. Taxonomy of IBN introduces 4 levels of maturity, from basic automation to self-operating networks. Ability to constantly validate that the operational state is the intended state is fundamental for IBN to coherently provide full life cycle management, from design to deployment to operations. This is to introduce the concept of IBA - Intent Based Analytics that are context and intent aware and gather only data that is relevant to the intent as the opposite to “big data fishing”.