Re: [Ibnemo] [Sdn] Defining a Common Model for intent

["Susan Hares" <[e-mail]>]

Stuart: 

High What and high level Why are  intent issues.  The rest (who, what,
where, when) is the context.  The question is how do we tease a part the
"pure" intent versus the context and constraint.  Can you look at this
example: 

Intent: [What] Connect my remote offices to my corporate headquarters [why]
to get Big Data input from remote offices, and results back to offices. 

Why seems to be the constraint in this description.   Is this what you were
thinking about? 

Sue 


-----Original Message-----
From: sdn [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of STUART VENTERS
Sent: Monday, June 08, 2015 10:22 AM
To: [e-mail]
Cc: 'Zhoutianran'; [e-mail]; Susan Hares; Bert Wijnen (IETF)
Subject: Re: [Sdn] [Ibnemo] Defining a Common Model for intent

All,

Over the weekend I figured out what is bugging me about the word intent.

Thinking about the interface (role?) between the customer and service
provider.
To provision a service, the provider needs to know the following:
   WHO the customer is. (the billing and technical contact info, perhaps a
PO number, and if the customer is a residence or business)
   WHAT sort of service.  (the speeds and feeds, what packet headers the
network is aware of, addressing, special things like nat or firewall,  etc)
   WHERE the service should appear. (physical location of the endpoints,
maybe logical circuit ID's)
   WHEN the service should work. (Install date, maybe the 100Gig for backups
only works at night?)

Conspicuously missing is the following  question:
   WHY the customer wants the service. (Perhaps the provider could provide a
better service if he knew this?)

To me, the word 'intent' focuses one to think about WHY.
Saying that the service is provisioned based on intent, implys that the
service provider can figure out what to do from mostly the WHY question.
This seems misleading.

That said, to figure out how to specify a service, there are all sorts of
interesting questions in the who, what, where, when area.
I wonder if this is where this intent stuff should head?


-Stuart

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