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  • 1604.05925v1

    Accepted author manuscript, 825 KB, PDF document

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Charting an intent driven network

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal article

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>20/04/2016
<mark>Journal</mark>arxiv.org
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

The current strong divide between applications and the network control plane is desirable for many reasons; but a downside is that the network is kept in the dark regarding the ultimate purposes and intentions of applications and, as a result, is unable to optimize for these. An alternative approach, explored in this paper, is for applications to declare to the network their abstract intents and assumptions; e.g. "this is a Tweet", or "this application will run within a local domain". Such an enriched semantic has the potential to enable the network better to fulfill application intent, while also helping optimize network resource usage across applications. We refer to this approach as 'intent driven networking' (IDN), and we sketch an incrementally-deployable design to serve as a stepping stone towards a practical realization of the IDN concept within today's Internet.