Intent-based network

Intent-Based Networking (IBN) is an approach to network management that shifts the focus from manually configuring individual devices to specifying desired outcomes or business objectives, referred to as "intents".

For example, an implementer can explicitly state a network purpose with a policy such as "Allow hosts A and B to communicate with X bandwidth capacity" without the need to understand the detailed mechanisms of the underlying devices (e.g. switches), topology or routing configurations.

[1] Advances in Natural Language Understanding (NLU) systems, along with neural network-based algorithms like BERT, RoBERTa, GLUE, and ERNIE, have enabled the conversion of user queries into structured representations that can be processed by automated services.

A proposed three-layered architecture integrates intent-based automation into network management systems.

[2] The intent layer evaluates and re-plans actions dynamically, where a Knowledge module abstracts and reasons about intents, while an Agent interfaces with network objects to execute actions.