Hi Toerless
(Top-posting to shorten it). We are in a broad agreement here. On this bit: "Supporting better agent communication is an important topic that would be great for the IETF to pick up." - agreed, but we need to see which bit of it needs to be supported by the network/ the system between the agents. Two things: - we often used AI models in an "indirect" fashion close to what you ask for below. Concretely, we were using AI/ML, even RL, to select the best parameterization for an otherwise deterministic, flexible distributed mechanisms. This is close to "the best of the two worlds": you deterministically get a correct response regardless of how badly your AI model was trained + you can improve the efficiency to the optimum, including in situations where no closed formula / one algorithmic run optimization can be used. [It can be formulated a bit broader of course: instead of asking an LLM to solve a problem (e.g., a shortest path in a graph), constrain it to use the best available Tools, Symbolic Solvers, etc. (e.g. Dijkstra).] - The last part seems particularly important to me. Given that LLM/FM are naturally prone to errors, it would be good to point the community to the fact that we need not just a network OS, but precisely this protected mode OS. Regards Artur > -----Original Message----- > From: Toerless Eckert <[email protected]> > Sent: Friday, July 17, 2026 11:31 AM > To: Artur Hecker <[email protected]> > Cc: Brian E Carpenter <[email protected]>; draft-eckert-anima- > [email protected]; Anima WG <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Anima] Re: I-D Action: draft-eckert-anima-ai4an-00.txt > > Inline > > On Wed, Jul 08, 2026 at 01:22:19PM +0000, Artur Hecker wrote: > > Hi Brian, hi Alex, hi Toerless > > > > +1, I am also all for what you are writing there. > > > > I agree that it could be presented at DAWN or agent2agent lists/meetings. > However, maybe slightly differently from Brian, I think that most of the > current > efforts somehow concentrate on discovery of agents, yet I tend to see a bigger > issue elsewhere. I do not mind discovery, but, a bit like Toerless, I fail to > see > what is so new about it, agents or not. > > Supporting better agent communication is an important topic that would be > great for the IETF to pick up. We did suggest aspects for it at last IETFs > CATALIST > non-WG forming BoF. I think the group that will best look into it so far is > DMSC, > not DAWN. > > > The document below essentially says: go away with the SDN controller and put > an LLM on top, which will auto-program the network from the high-level intents > expressed by the owner. For this to work, the ACP, BRSKI and GRASP serve as > the > required and potentially sufficient foundation. > > More like the lowest common denominator. More would be better, but i think > you can't build something reliable without them. So definitely if we can't > agree > on nothing else of how to do network management with the help of agentic AI, > we hopefully do at least agree that it's a good opportunity to highlight the > importance of the ANI to do it reliably. > > > Personally, I agree with this vision, I would have loved that to happen way > earlier, but somehow community lost interest in that... Now, the whole story > about agents jump-starts the next chapter of the same story. > > Router software infrastructure is highly ossified, and even when it's being > re- > implemented, then folks who do it have no clue what they're missing out on. > > > Some remarks: > > - maybe instead of "heuristic" we should talk about probabilistic > > behaviour? As > per its definition, a heuristic is an approach to problem solving, which > might not > be optimal or rationalized yet good enough [cmp. Wikipedia]. I am not sure > LLM's answers are, in that sense, good enough, as they often turn out to be > awfully wrong at times. That's the reason we can't work with that in critical > systems (yet?). > > Good point on terminology. And the core proposal of the draft effectively is > to > not let agents directly do arbitrary changes to the network directly, but > instead > let them program automation and control exhaustive testing of the automation > programming. All the stuff we would do without agentic AI too. > > Or said differently: Letting an AI agent directly reconfigure a network every > router one-by-one instead of writing a program to do it is just like a human > doing it manually - becoming exhausted and erraneous and unpredictable when > it has to happen over and over. > > Obviously, we need to find good distinctions between this "LLM level problem" > and e.g.: > the use of specific DNN for problems that can perfectly live with > probabilistic > solutions - such as traffic engineering. > > > - if we are serious about ACP/GRASP/BRSKI as foundation, we would need to > show that, even in spite of potential misjudgments by LLM or programming > errors done by it, ACP would always remain "the last Mohican": ACP should be > the last to fail, i.e. in presence of a potentially unverified programs > produced at > will by the LLM/foundation model, the ACP must act like an implementation of a > protected mode in an OS, like an OS kernel if you will, preserving the > possibility > to repair/remove/terminate misbehaving programs. Such that we can have a > bunch of simple yet reliable tools on top of ACP to clean away any nonsense > introduced by LLM/foundation models, and, also very important, to be able to > isolate the effects of such programs by separating concerns and enforcing > "control app manifests" in a distributed system. > > Indeed. And maybe we should use the opportunity to write this up anew for the > agentic AI crows to also come up with new better terminology. Instead of or in > addition to ANI maybe call it the "Network wide OS kernel" - aka: more good > marketing suggestions more than welcome! > > Cheers > Toerless > > > > Regards > > Artur > > > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Brian E Carpenter <[email protected]> > > Sent: Monday, July 6, 2026 3:50 AM > > To: [email protected]; Anima WG <[email protected]> > > Subject: [Anima] Re: I-D Action: draft-eckert-anima-ai4an-00.txt > > > > Hi, > > > > I'm all for what you are saying in this draft, but I think you also have to > > address > it to the DAWN people and everybody working on agentic communications. > Look at draft-he-dawn-ipv6-agent-aware-framework, for example; it has very > little to do with IPv6. Maybe you should ask for a slot at the DAWN BOF? (DAWN > = Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and Named Entities.) At least point out that > ANIMA/GRASP has been working on discovery of agents since the dawn of time > (pun intended). > > > > Also, the trust boundary issue we just discussed re > > draft-soulard-anima-grasp- > router-problem-statement is going to be relevant. I see a clear clash between > the type of trust boundary that BRSKI provides and how the agentic community > is looking at trust. > > > > Nit: s/autonomous/autonomic/ globally > > > > (We chose "autonomic" at the beginning of ANIMA, by analogy with the > > autonomic nervous system, so I think we need to be consistent.) > > > > Regards/Ngā mihi > > Brian > > > > On 06-Jul-26 11:28, [email protected] wrote: > > > Internet-Draft draft-eckert-anima-ai4an-00.txt is now available. > > > > > > Title: AI for Autonomous Networking > > > Authors: Toerless Eckert > > > Alexander Clemm > > > Name: draft-eckert-anima-ai4an-00.txt > > > Pages: 17 > > > Dates: 2026-07-05 > > > > > > Abstract: > > > > > > This document builds on the architectural foundation of the IETF > > > ANIMA "Autonomous Network Infrastructure" to propose an architecture > > > for in-network intelligence in support of network automation. > > > > > > The key aspect of this architecture is the use of AI programmed and > > > validated software running decentralized on the network. > > > > > > The IETF datatracker status page for this Internet-Draft is: > > > https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-eckert-anima-ai4an/ > > > > > > There is also an HTMLized version available at: > > > https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-eckert-anima-ai4an-00 > > > > > > Internet-Drafts are also available by rsync at: > > > rsync.ietf.org::internet-drafts > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > I-D-Announce mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe > > > send an email to [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > > Anima mailing list -- [email protected] > > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > > -- > --- > [email protected] _______________________________________________ Anima mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
