Declarative Provisioning of Virtual Network Function Chains in Intent-based Networks

Intent-based Networking (IBN) aims at simplifying network configuration and management by using high-level objectives that express the desired state of the network rather than the details of how to implement it. In this article, we propose a declarative methodology and an associated open-source Prolog prototype (i) to model IBN intents related to the provisioning of Virtual Network Function (VNF) chains, and (ii) to process those intents to assemble and place a VNF chain that fulfils them. Our prototype is assessed over a lifelike motivating scenario.