Security-Oriented Network Intent Placement using Particle Swarm Optimization

As the network infrastructure grows, its configuration and service provisioning become a tedious process. Accordingly, new paradigms have emerged, such as the Intent-Based Networking (IBN), that envision the automation of the network configuration, while minimizing the human intervention. Specifically, IBN allows users to interact with the network through high-level and declarative requests, called intents, which later can be translated into low-level configurations. IBN can entail different scopes and target network infrastructures, while being domain specific, which can create several challenges in terms of the final activation of the requested intents. To this end, in this paper, we mainly focus on intents that are expressing security and Quality of Service (QoS) network services demands that can be translated into Service Function Chains (SFC) and automatically deployed over a campus network. Our work and depending on the security level expressed in the intent, tries to optimally decide the level of multi-tenancy or complete segregation of the users' services that can be achieved, while satisfying the network provider's objectives. In particular, an artificial intelligence inspired algorithm called Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is modeled that automatically tries to find the best placement of the intents, while satisfying the security and QoS requirements of the users issuing the intents.