EXPERT OPINION
How close are we to the
self-operating network?
Intent-based networking
offers significant
advantages to modern
infrastructure teams. But
how close are we to the
self-operating network?
Mansour Karam, CEO
of Apstra, unravels the
rise of intent-based
networks and explores
whether we can yet
trust the most advanced
networks to apply their
own corrective actions.
40
Issue 07
ntent-based’ increased
in popularity in 2018, but
how much is real? Intent-
based networking is a major
advancement towards the self-operating
network (known as level 3 intent-based
networking), but it is itself made up from
many smaller advances.
‘I
It has many pretenders offering partial
features such as basic automation (level
0 intent-based networking) while missing
support for vendor-agnostic infrastructure,
single source of truth and the ability
to deliver real-time change validation
regardless of underlying hardware or
operating system technology.
The first significant feature of intent-based
networking must be an architecture built
on a single source of truth, embracing
both the intent and the actual network
status – including control of every aspect
of the network service
Without this single source of truth,
questions like ‘Which users will
be impacted if link x fails or gets
congested?’, or ‘What is the link
utilisation on all links carrying user X’s
traffic?’, mean consulting the network
map, checking that it is up-to-date,
checking the operational state of every
link – and so on and so on.
Even when all the necessary data
has been collected and collated, the
final answer still has to be calculated.
Whereas a network with a single source
of truth has all the necessary data in that
one source and, in a truly intent-based
system, the answer to those questions
can be automatically and speedily
calculated and displayed.
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