Bridging High-Level Intent and Network Execution: Detecting Violations and Intent Drift Through Low-Level Traffic Analysis

2026-06-03

AI Summary

This work addresses the lack of effective validation mechanisms between high-level management intent and low-level data-plane execution in Intent-Based Networking (IBN) by proposing an Internal Low-level Intent (ILI) telemetry framework. The framework standardizes packet headers into 7-tuple vectors to construct a quantifiable telemetry interface for measuring intent consistency. Analysis of 100.91 million honeypot flow records reveals a “compliance paradox”: while relaxing policy strictness reduces violation counts, intent drift remains largely unchanged, indicating the unreliability of conventional violation metrics. The ILI metric effectively identifies intent deviations and enables closed-loop policy adjustments, demonstrating consistent fidelity to high-level intent across Strict, Balanced, and Permissive policy configurations.

Abstract

Intent-Based Networking (IBN) structures a core management pillar for autonomous 6G networks by translating high-level administrative goals into autonomous configurations, yet a critical validation gap persists between declarative intent and data-plane execution. This paper investigates this gap by formalizing low-level flow headers into standardized 7-tuple vectors, establishing an Internal Low-Level Intent (ILI) telemetry interface. Leveraging an empirical dataset of 100.91 million flow records from a distributed honeynet, we evaluate three administrative policy regimes (Strict, Balanced, and Permissive) across two metrics: Policy Violations ($V$) and Intent Drift ($D$). Our results expose a distinct Compliance Paradox where widening policy permissiveness systematically suppresses violation counts, yet underlying operational intent drift remains mostly invariant. This demonstrates that conventional, violation-centric tracking are unreliable. Furthermore, an empirical case study show that ILI metrics structural violations can inform closed-loop orchestrators to dynamically recalculate and enforce low-level rules that maintain high-level operational intent.

Problem

• Intent-Based Networking
• Policy Violations
• Intent Drift
• Validation Gap
• 6G Networks

Innovation

• Intent-Based Networking
• Internal Low-Level Intent
• Intent Drift
• Policy Violations
• Closed-Loop Orchestration