A Survey on Intent-Based Networking

Current and future network services and applications are expected to revolutionize our society and lifestyle. At the same time, the abundant possibilities that new network technologies offer to end users, network operators and administrators have created a cumbersome network configuration process to accommodate all different stakeholders and applications. Thus, lately, there is a need to simplify the management and configuration of the network, through possibly an autonomic and automatic way. Intent Based Networking (IBN) is such a paradigm that envisions flexible, agile, and simplified network configuration with minimal external intervention. This paper provides a detailed survey of how the IBN concept works and what are the main components to guarantee a fully autonomous IBN system (IBNS). Particular emphasis is given on the intent expression, intent translation, intent resolution, intent activation and intent assurance components, which form the closed loop automation system of an IBNS. The survey concludes with identifying open challenges and future directions of the problem at hand.