ENI Activity Report 2018-2019

Chairman: Raymond Forbes, Huawei Technologies

Responsible for developing standards that leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) mechanisms to assist in the management and orchestration of the network.

The introduction of technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), NFV and network slicing means that networks are becoming more flexible and powerful.  

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques in the network supervisory and management system can help solve some of the problems of future network deployment and operation.

Our ISG on Experiential Networked Intelligence (ISG ENI) develops standards that use AI mechanisms to recognize new or changed knowledge, and thus make actionable decisions for operators. ENI will thus enable an efficient, intelligence-based deployment of SDN and NFV, and will in turn assist the management and orchestration of the network.

In 2018, ISG ENI completed the first phase of its work that included publishing of Group Reports describing ENI use cases, capabilities and policies together with a definition of features, as well as Group Specifications about ENI requirements and Proof of Concept framework. The development of specifications of an ENI architecture using AI techniques was also a subject followed during the course of the year.

ISG ENI cooperates closely with H2020 (including 5G-PPP) projects, i.e. SliceNet, 5G-MoNArch and SHIELD. As a result a few proofs of concepts were in place within ISG ENI last year, with an objective to demonstrate: the network elasticity mechanisms with a special attention to the AI/ML aspects; and how AI based network security management framework operates against different types of threats.

In order to communicate its achievements and activities ISG ENI was present at several conferences and industry events, for example: ZERO TOUCH & CARRIER AUTOMATION CONGRESS in Madrid, ONS Conference in Los Angeles; Network Intelligence Forum, CCSA TC 610 in Beijing; and the NFV/SDN World Congress in The Hague.

LOOK OUT FOR IN 2019 – ISG ENI WORK IN PROGRESS:

 Group Report (GR) on definition of networked intelligence categorization

• Revision to Group Specification (GS) on ENI PoC framework
• GS on ENI system architecture
• Revision to GR on terminology for main concepts in ENI
• Revision to GSs on ENI requirements and use cases