70th NMRG Meeting – Session 2�IETF 117, Hybrid

Chairs: Laurent Ciavaglia, Jérôme François

Secretaries: Jéferson Campos Nobre, Pedro Martinez-Julia

Information for participants

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Note Well – Intellectual Property

• The IRTF follows the IETF Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) disclosure rules
• By participating in the IRTF, you agree to follow IRTF processes and policies:
• If you are aware that any IRTF contribution is covered by patents or patent applications that are owned or controlled by you or your sponsor, you must disclose that fact, or not participate in the discussion
• The IRTF expects that you file such IPR disclosures in a timely manner – in a period measured in days or weeks, not months
• The IRTF prefers that the most liberal licensing terms possible are made available for IRTF Stream documents – see RFC 5743
• Definitive information is in RFC 5378 (Copyright) and RFC 8179 (Patents, Participation), substituting IRTF for IETF, and at https://irtf.org/policies/ipr

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Note Well – Audio and Video Recordings

• The IRTF routinely makes recordings of online and in-person meetings, including audio, video and photographs, and publishes those recordings online

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• If you participate in person and choose not to wear a red “do-not-photograph” lanyard, then you consent to appear in such recordings, and if you speak at a microphone, appear on a panel, or carry out an official duty as a member of IRTF leadership then you consent to appearing in recordings of you at that time

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• If you participate online, and turn on your camera and/or microphone, then you consent to appear in such recordings

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Note Well – Privacy & Code of Conduct

• As a participant in, or attendee to, any IRTF activity you acknowledge that written, audio, video, and photographic records of meetings may be made public

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• Personal information that you provide to IRTF will be handled in accordance with the Privacy Policy at https://www.ietf.org/privacy-policy/

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• As a participant or attendee, you agree to work respectfully with other participants; please contact the ombudsteam (https://www.ietf.org/contact/ombudsteam/) if you have questions or concerns about this

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• See RFC 7154 (Code of Conduct) and RFC 7776 (Anti-Harassment Procedures), which also apply to IRTF

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Goals of the IRTF

The IRTF conducts research; it is not a standards development organization

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The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) focuses on longer term research issues related to the Internet while the parallel organization, the IETF, focuses on shorter term issues of engineering and standards making

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While the IRTF can publish informational or experimental documents in the RFC series, its primary goal is to promote development of research collaboration and teamwork in exploring research issues related to Internet protocols, applications, architecture, and technology

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See “An IRTF Primer for IETF Participants” – RFC 7418

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Meeting useful links

• Materials: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/117/session/nmrg
• Meetecho: https://meetings.conf.meetecho.com/ietf117/?group=nmrg
• Notes: https://notes.ietf.org/notes-ietf-117-nmrg
• Video recording: https://www.youtube.com/user/ietf/playlists (available post-meeting)

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• Questions shared on the mailing list to

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• Define the important topics to be addressed in NMRG

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• How to address these topics in NMRG?

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• The expected outcomes of the RG

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Objectives

• NMRG
• Not too old ☺
• Should continue:
• The management of the Internet is an endless function. The technologies for the management of networks are changing and the requirements are changing also.

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• Open forum to share new ideas
• 🡪 Always align with up-to-date topic = evolves on-time with new (network management) technologies
• 🡪 difficult to follow-up on all proposals 🡪 need more interim meetings to maintain discussions on topics which create some interest during IETF meeting

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General Remarks

• Drafts / RFCs
• Allows to articulate and document RG research
• = visible outputs of the groups (on the datatracker)
• Help possible transitions to IETF WG

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• Drafts should not be the only target, a more agile and less rigid methodology would be desirable
• Brainstorming sessions
• Practical work to validate ideas (e.g., during IETF Hackathons)
• Technical presentations / workshop series
• Only something that could potentially become relevant for standardization
• Collide with numerous academic workshop

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Types of contributions and outcomes

• Reinforce connections with IETF
• a better incubator for standards (increase NMRG impact within IETF)
• NMRG outcomes could also results in proposing standards in WGs
• 🡪 Request explicit description of possible standards that can emerge beyond any NMRG work (for example in draft)
• Improve our coverage on interoperability and interoperability aspects and on enabling technologies 🡪 implementation, hackathon
• This is what makes NMRG different to other (academic) workshops (~ added value of NMRG for researchers)
• Reinforce connections with other RGs
• UFMRG (Usable Formal Methods Proposed Research Group)
• 🡪network configuration verification. tie with AI topic?
• Keep focused
• Selected topics + RG drafts to consolidate a group common vision = have a clear research agenda / roadmap (refined on a regular basis)
• Filter the CFPs on the mailing list
• Make and maintain coordination with other WGs and SDOs (avoid overlapping)

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Attractiveness of NMRG

• Current topics
• Ok but maybe with some priorities?
• 🡪 priorities should also align with the level of efforts participants are ready to devote
• Data and metadata management
• Data (and do not forget metadata) are essential to enabling other new technologies already identified like IBN, AI, green networking, or autonomous networks.
• Addressed in different topics / documents (DTN, AI) but beyond a unique RG “topic” 🡪 a topic by itself?
• Possible contributions:
• Document on distributed and scalable data management including guidelines for applying recent approaches to network management
• Transfer results and ideas to related WGs (OPS Area), and other SDOs (3GPP, ETSI, TMF...)
• SNMP 🡪 YANG 🡪 … ?
• Revise current management frameworks and see where there is room for improvement (and how), e.g. assurance
• Encrypted traffic management
• Can be an AI use-case

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NMRG topics

• Use cases
• Cover a larger variety
• Resume dedicated interim meetings (there are already several propositions and work done…)
• Other work items to continue / develop
• Architecture: discussion but no real success
• Mediation and assurance
• Interfaces between Intent Lifecycle functions
• Intent representation, aggregation / outcome representation – what abstractions would be needed, what gaps exist – is YANG sufficient?
• Support standardization
• Identify some killer use case: look at a particular type of intent, then determine what it would take to achieve it – from data to protocol extensions to other mechanisms
• Network automation (ANIMA)

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IBN

• Challenges of coupling AI-NM Very
• Stable and mature document: “finalize it rapidly”
• Focus on a few of challenges (Explore the solution space for the selected challenges) for the next steps
• Make connections with other topics (e.g. DTN)
• Possible work items
• Measurement / data model / telemetry extensions (to better enable AI applications)
• Distributed AI: enablers for sharing (+disseminating, updating) federated models
• Metadata to facilitate lineage tracing (to facilitate explaninabilitly, better understand impact of training data & help adapt models to new networking contexts. Etc)
• Deployment/implementation (pinpoint successes and fails)
• Do not propose a unique architecture but use cases (traffic management, incident management…)
• In IETF ecosystem
• Align with OPS and Security areas (trustworthiness aspects)
• AI in other WG/RGs: NMRG as one main driver?

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AI

• Possible contributions:
• Document on distributed and scalable data management including guidelines for applying recent approaches to network management
• Data quality (How to ensure quality of data as this becomes critical for AI among others?)
• Generated data / telemetry to be done in accordance with a targeted quality (data-quality-by-design)
• Explore methodologies, based on metadata, for data owners to publish high-quality, trustworthy and understandable datasets
• Expected quality depends on the application 🡪 ensure a better integration of telemetry processes with the final application
• 🡪 propose method to assess data quality based on use case / NM taxonomy
• Labeling process (for humans and for machines)
• Datasets?
• Not the goal of NMRG but can support initiatives (in cooperation with CNOM/NOMS community)
• Review existing dataset (Assess the quality with our proposed methods or share lessons learned)
• “Which dataset for what?” Maintain a catalog? (see European initiatives with Data spaces and Zenodo repositories)
• Specific academic workshop (beyond NMRG)
• Looks at the bigger picture in terms of collecting, correlating and aggregating network modelled data
• Next steps for network telemetry framework
• Bridge the gap between network and data industry (integrate NM processes into data processing pipelines)
• Transfer results and ideas to related WGs (OPS Area), and other SDOs (3GPP, ETSI, TMF...)

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Data management

• Follow-up of the current group document?
• Data models and instrumentation to assess and attribute carbon footprint
• Carbon telemetry
• Event representation (e.g. alarms)
• Couple with AI: network carbon optimization for path optimization
• How to have NMRG in the big picture and position the group?
• IAB proposed e-impact program
• Make formal liaisons with other SDOS
• 🡪 progress rapidly on the current document
• Coordinate with groups in OPS (models), Routing (applicability) and Transport (exposure)

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Green networking

• NMRG topics
• Current topics are valid but need
• A clear workplan to progress
• 🡪 organize a dedicated interim meeting per topic to gather all volunteers
• IBN: use cases as the priority
• AI: select some challenges and use cases
• DTN: formulate and articulate research questions, use cases… (Tuesday’s session)
• Address the topics in a transversal manner, e.g. AI for DTN
• New topics
• Green networking: monitoring / measurement but also need to be align with IAB proposed program
• Data Management: data quality, telemetry framework
• Continue to ensure NMRG is an open forum for new ideas and refine the agenda if necessary for example to integrate green networking and data management aspects)
• Maintain the impact of NMRG
• Coordinate with relevant WGs: NMRG must support standardization effort (otherwise no difference with a conference workshop)
• NMRG topics must be aligned / positioning in regards to the initiatives of the other SDOs (make formal liaisons) 🡪 need help of NMRG participants to identify and participate)

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Concluding remarks