Improving Intent Correctness with Automated Testing

Alcock, Paul and Simms, Ben and Fantom, Will and Rotsos, Charalampos and Race, Nicholas (2022) Improving Intent Correctness with Automated Testing. In: 2022 IEEE 8th International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft) :. IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft) . IEEE, pp. 61-66. ISBN 9781665406949

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Abstract

Intent-based networking (IBN) systems have become the de-facto control abstraction to drive self-service, self-healing, and self-optimized capabilities in service delivery processes. Nonetheless, the operation complexity of modern network infrastructures make network practitioners apprehensive towards adoption in production, requiring further evidence for correctness. In this paper, we argue that testing, verification and monitoring should become first-class citizens in reference IBN architecture, in order to improve the detection errors during operations. Towards this goal, we present an extension for an intent architecture that allows IBN system to validate the correctness of network configuration using realistic network emulation. Furthermore, we present an intent use-case that ensure correct operation in hybrid networks.