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Hauptverfasser: Sifakis, Joseph, Li, Dongming, Huang, Hairong, Zhang, Yong, Dang, Wenshuan, Huang, River, Yu, Yijun
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12871
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author Sifakis, Joseph
Li, Dongming
Huang, Hairong
Zhang, Yong
Dang, Wenshuan
Huang, River
Yu, Yijun
author_facet Sifakis, Joseph
Li, Dongming
Huang, Hairong
Zhang, Yong
Dang, Wenshuan
Huang, River
Yu, Yijun
contents The vision of autonomous systems is becoming increasingly important in many application areas, where the aim is to replace humans with agents. These include autonomous vehicles and other agents' applications in business processes and problem-solving. For networks, the increasing scale and operation and management (O&M) complexity drive the need for autonomous networks (AN). The technical objective of AN is to ensure trustworthy O&M without human intervention for higher efficiency and lower operating costs. However, realizing AN seems more difficult than autonomous vehicles. It encounters challenges of networks' structural and functional complexity, which operate as distributed dynamic systems governed by various technical and economic constraints. A key problem lies in formulating a rigorous development methodology that facilitates a seamless transition from traditional networks to AN. Central to this methodology is the definition of a reference architecture for network agents, which specifies the required functionalities for their realization, regardless of implementation choices. This article proposes a reference architecture characterizing main functional features, illustrating its application with network use cases. It shows how artificial intelligence components can be used to implement the required functionality and its coordination. The latter is achieved through the management and generation of shared domain-specific knowledge stored in long-term memory, ensuring the overall consistency of decisions and their execution. The article concludes with a discussion of architecture specialization for building network layer agents. It also identifies the main technical challenges ahead, such as satisfying essential requirements at development or runtime, as well as the issue of coordinating agents to achieve collective intelligence in meeting overall network goals.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_12871
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Reference Architecture for Autonomous Networks: An Agent-Based Approach
Sifakis, Joseph
Li, Dongming
Huang, Hairong
Zhang, Yong
Dang, Wenshuan
Huang, River
Yu, Yijun
Networking and Internet Architecture
The vision of autonomous systems is becoming increasingly important in many application areas, where the aim is to replace humans with agents. These include autonomous vehicles and other agents' applications in business processes and problem-solving. For networks, the increasing scale and operation and management (O&M) complexity drive the need for autonomous networks (AN). The technical objective of AN is to ensure trustworthy O&M without human intervention for higher efficiency and lower operating costs. However, realizing AN seems more difficult than autonomous vehicles. It encounters challenges of networks' structural and functional complexity, which operate as distributed dynamic systems governed by various technical and economic constraints. A key problem lies in formulating a rigorous development methodology that facilitates a seamless transition from traditional networks to AN. Central to this methodology is the definition of a reference architecture for network agents, which specifies the required functionalities for their realization, regardless of implementation choices. This article proposes a reference architecture characterizing main functional features, illustrating its application with network use cases. It shows how artificial intelligence components can be used to implement the required functionality and its coordination. The latter is achieved through the management and generation of shared domain-specific knowledge stored in long-term memory, ensuring the overall consistency of decisions and their execution. The article concludes with a discussion of architecture specialization for building network layer agents. It also identifies the main technical challenges ahead, such as satisfying essential requirements at development or runtime, as well as the issue of coordinating agents to achieve collective intelligence in meeting overall network goals.
title A Reference Architecture for Autonomous Networks: An Agent-Based Approach
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12871