Towards Intent-based Configuration


Verification requires a specification of intent,
which can inspire configuration language design.

Expressing intended behavior will improve routing.
Verification: check existing configurations against intent.
Synthesis: generate configurations according to intent.

Example: Controlling propagation of eBGP routes
ACLs, filters, communities, etc. are prone to mistakes.
Why not simply specify the intended policy?

Example: Aggregation
Tradeoffs: hiding information about failures, TE, scalability.
Operator should specify intended goals, not the mechanism.