Re: [nmrg] Notes of the NMRG meeting @ IM 2017, May 11th 2017

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 10:58:30PM +0100, Lisandro Zambenedetti Granville wrote:
> Dear NMRG subscribers,
> 
> Please find below the notes from the NMRG meeting at IM 2017.

[...]
 
> . Alex
>  - A position document, to put the concepts of IBN, PBNM (policy-based
>    network management), and service management in perspective, is important
>    to clarify these concepts and their relationship with each other

I always assumed so far that IBN (intent based networking) is just a
new name for old concepts. The IETF has gone through some discussions
on this during the creation of the SUPA working group. There is not
much left in the actual charter text but clearly there was lots of
discussions during the chartering phase. The SUPA charter still
contains this:

  Declarative policies that specify the goals to achieve but not how
  to achieve those goals (also called "intent-based" policies) are out
  of scope for the initial phase of SUPA but may be considered in
  future phases of SUPA.

I guess some of the confusion stems from people assuming policy-based
management is tightly associated with event-condition-action rules
(e.g., <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy-based_management>) while
there has been lots of research work on declarative policy-based
management systems as well, which is however not so widely recognized.
A decent document clarifying the origin of terms and concepts would
indeed be useful.

There are some surveys in this area ([1] as an example) and there has
been a whole series of scientific policy-based management workshops
years ago. If someone has the time and energy to write up a good
summary that is accessible to a larger community, this would be an
effort I wholeheartedly welcome.

/js

[1] http://rboutaba.cs.uwaterloo.ca/Papers/Journals/2007/Boutaba07.pdf
    (doi:10.1007/s10922-007-9083-8)

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: [phone]         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
Fax:   [phone]         <http://www.jacobs-university.de/>