Demo abstract: An intent solver for enabling intent-based SDN

Abstract

In recent years, software-defined networking (SDN) has been adopted in practice, such as the fast-growing market of software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN). Intent, an emerging concept for SDN, aims to provide a simple interface for operators to manage the network. Under the framework of intent, an application submits a request by specifying the objective only, and the SDN controller decides how to reconfigure the network by considering the objectives of multiple intents with potential conflicts. For instance, in SD-WAN, when multiple applications or flows are competing for limited MPLS resource, we need to decide how and when to redirect some of them to Internet broadband connections. To this end, an intent solver is needed to analyze the received intents, making optimized solutions to operate the network. In this demo, we present the prototype of an intent solver focusing on intents related to flow routing. The demo takes intents both from applications for establishing/adjusting connections and from the network operator for load balancing, and generates optimized routing/rerouting solutions in real time.