Re: [Anima] What is intent ?

Hi,

A little bit off the thread started by Toerless, I believe that the development of the infrastructure on which intents are distributed should not be tightly bound to our understanding of and consensus on what intents are (and what they are not). This, at least, as long as there are other parameters to be distributed over that infrastructure. In that sense, I do agree with Brian's mail. 

Regards, 
Zoran

-----Original Message-----
From: Anima [mailto:anima-bounces@ietf.org] On Behalf Of Brian E Carpenter
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2017 1:05 AM
To: Toerless Eckert; anima@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [Anima] What is intent ?

Distribution trimmed to Anima:

Whenever I've asked "Is X Intent?", I've usually been told "No" except for cases where X is too abstract to interpret algorithmically.

But in practice, I believe that many ASAs will need instructions from the NOC to modify their default behaviour. I don't care what we call those instructions; for the prefix management use case we just called them "parameters".

So maybe Anima should focus on parameter distribution more than on Intent. I think that's the point of draft-liu-anima-grasp-distribution.
A fairly simple change to the wording of draft-du-anima-an-intent would adapt it to generic parameter distribution.

Converting abstract Intent to concrete parameters can be completely separate from this, and could well be a centralised operation.

Or we could spend another 6 months discussing how to know Intent when we see it. But I would prefer that to happen in NMRG.

Regards
   Brian

On 26/07/2017 08:34, Toerless Eckert wrote:
> I have an autonomic network, and i want for another customer another 
> L3VPN service instance in it.  How would i tell the network that i 
> want this ? Via intent or via something else ?
> 
> If it is something else, what is it ? I do not see any other 
> information flow from operator to network beside intent in RFC7575 or draft-ietf-anima-reference-model.
> Maybe i am missing something.
> 
> If it is intent, how would it look like ? Could it simply be a 
> definition of an L3VPN service instance in the model defined in rfc8049 ? If not, why not ?
> 
> IMHO: Intent in ANIMA includes service definitions such as what 
> rfc8049 is, except that we would reserve the right to eliminate all 
> parameters of rfc8049 for which we figure out autonomic ways to 
> determine them. Which alas seems to be quite difficult for most parameters.
> 
> Other folks in the IETF clearly think that a service definition is NOT 
> intent, but intent can only be some yet unclear high level policy. If 
> thats the prevailing opinion/wisdom in the IETF, then IMHO we need to 
> be more explicit about the fact that Intent is not the only input into 
> the network but that there is also other input. Such as services. And 
> anything else that people do not want to call Intent.
> 
> Lets assume service and other necessary data operator->network should 
> not be called intent. But lets say the superset of intent + services + 
> everything else is called eg: "information". I think that 
> draft-du-anima-an-intent would equally apply to all information we 
> would want to distribute into an autonomic network.
> 
> Cheers
>     Toerless
> 
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> 

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