Intent-Based End-to-End Network Service Orchestration System for Multi-Platforms

TLDR

5G’s on‑demand service relies on NFV, but manually crafting VNF and NS descriptors is error‑prone and requires expert skill, so an intent‑based networking approach that uses user intentions can automate modeling and orchestration. The paper proposes an Intent Management System that models VNFs and orchestrates end‑to‑end network services across multiple platforms. The system ingests high‑level service intent, configures it, and translates it to the target platform, and was evaluated on M‑CORD and OSM orchestrators. Results show the system reduces end‑user effort in creating network slices and enables seamless end‑to‑end service orchestration.

Abstract

On-demand service is the main feature of the 5G network, and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) provides it by virtualizing the existing 5G network infrastructure. NFV crafts various virtual networks on a shared physical network, but one of the core challenges in future 5G networks is to automate the modeling of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) and end-to-end Network Service (NS) orchestration with less human interaction. Traditionally, the descriptor of VNF and NS is created manually, which requires expert-level skills. This manual approach has a big threat of human error, which can be avoided by using the Intent-Based Networking (IBN) approach. The IBN approach eliminates the requirement of expertise for designing VNFs and NS by taking users’ intentions as an input. In this paper, the proposed system presents the Intent Management System for VNF modeling and end-to-end NS orchestration for multi-platforms. This system takes the high-level information related to a specific service, configures it accordingly, and converts it into the selected platform. The proposed system is tested using Mobile Central Office Re-architected as Data Center (M-CORD) and Open-Source Management and Orchestration (OSM) orchestrators. The results section shows that the proposed system reduces the effort of the end-user in creating network slices and provides seamless end-to-end service orchestration.