AMANOS: An Intent-Driven Management and Orchestration System for Next-Generation Cloud-Native Networks

Next-generation mobile networks, namely 5G and beyond, have received significant interest from the research community. This is due to their potential in enabling innovative services and delivering unparalleled performance. To meet these expectations, mobile network operators (MNOs) are investing in cloud native technologies to enhance the reliability, delivery, and adaptability of their services. Consequently, network infrastructures are growing in complexity, particularly with regard to the integration of computing, caching, and communications resources. Managing such complex infrastructure requires novel paradigms that can lower operational costs and enable autonomous management. One promising paradigm for achieving such goals is intent-based networking (IBN). By introducing the notion of intent, IBN empowers systems to autonomously fulfill high-level specified expectations. It emphasizes on the desired outcome rather than the technical details, which proves to be efficient in tackling the escalating network complexity. In this article, we introduce an intent-driven system that translates high-level service demands expressed in a natural language and transforms them into continuously monitored deployments. The proposed system incorporates a closed automation loop that continuously monitors and fulfills the desired expectations. It provides multi-access edge computing (MEC) digital services and 5G core network functions' resources. To validate our approach, we realize a demonstration leveraging a 360° video streaming use case in a physical testbed.