Introduction
The Experiential Networked Intelligence Industry Specification Group (ENI ISG) is defining a Cognitive Network Management architecture, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and context-aware policies to adjust offered services based on changes in user needs, environmental conditions and business goals. It therefore fully benefits all networks, including 5G networks, by providing automated service provision, operation, and assurance, as well as optimized slice management and resource orchestration. ENI has also launched Proof of Concepts (PoCs) aiming to demonstrate how AI techniques can be used to assist network operation including 5G.
The use of Artificial Intelligence techniques in the network will solve problems of future network deployment and operation.
Our Roles & Activities
ENI focuses on improving the operator experience, using closed-loop AI mechanisms based on context-aware, metadata-driven policies. This enables the ENI system recognize and incorporate new and changed knowledge, and hence make actionable decisions. This model gives recommendations to decision-making systems, such as network control and will interact with management systems, to adjust services and resources offered based on changes in user needs, environmental conditions and business goals.
ENI has published the first version of the System Architecture with Context Aware Policy Management, Categorization on Networks using AI Intent aware network Architecture, Data mechanisms, Evaluation of Categorization, functional concepts, Prominent control loop Architectures & Artificial intelligent mechanisms. Two versions of the Proof of Concept (PoC) Framework and three versions of the Use Cases, Requirements and Terminology in Release 2. A second version of the System Architecture has been published recently.
The System Architecture is being specified, with a new published version 2 including a high-level architecture using details of AI decision techniques. ENI has opened new work-items to collect release 3 of the Use cases, Requirements, and terminology, and a revised work item on categorization for AI application to Networks. ENI is also working on reports on the measuring of Evaluation of Classification, Intent knowledge within the Architecture and Data mechanisms, Data telemetry.
The Architecture is summarise as two control loops using AI modelling. Data Gathered is Passed via an optional API, Normalised and processed in a number of AI Analysis Functional Blocks, which may be recursive and interactive using an inner loop. The Actionable decision is then de-normalised and passed back to the network using the same optional API in reverse.
High Level Functional Architecture
The ENI System Architecture may be shown in various classes of operation. From less capable legacy systems Class 1 option 1 to fully interactive AI systems Class 3 option 2.
Classes and modes of operation
ENI has launched a continuing Proof of Concepts activity. A PoC review team was created and tasked with reviewing incoming proposals. The PoC review activity is supported by Vodafone, TIM, China Telecom, PT, Redhat, Samsung and Huawei. Each PoC Team proposal shall address at least one goal relevant to ENI, related with an ENI Use Case, an ENI Requirement or the suitability of the ENI System Architecture aspect. The output of each PoC project shall contribute to the completion of the version 2 specifications within ISG ENI, with the publication of the revised PoC Framework the proof of reference points between equipment is added. To improve the output of the work items the alignment with existing activities is required. Each PoC proposal will provide proof of the technical feasibility of ENI within the Industry. Proof of Concept (PoC) proposals are called for in line with the approved PoC framework. With the publication of the revised PoC Framework the proof of reference points between equipment is added.
Specifications
A full list of related specifications in the public domain is accessible via the ENI committee page.
Blog
News, comments and opinions from ETSI’s ENI Industry Specification Group
The direct link to refer to this blog is https://www.etsi.org/newsroom/blogs/blog-eni
The ENI#28 meeting was online and took place on 11-14 December 2023.
- 25 ISG members present.
- 122 documents were handled and more may come in with some email approval.
The ETSI ENI Industry Specification Group was created in February 2017, today members come from operators, vendors and research institutes all over the world.
The meeting was productive and achieved progress. A deliverable ENI 035 was published during ENI#28, early Release 4, four deliverables were agreed as stable, two more are expected to be stable in January 2024:
- GR ENI 035 Categorization or AI for IP networks was published 14th December 2023 as Release 4.
With the publication of the report (ETSI GR ENI 035) specifically defining the evaluation criteria for the determination of the Autonomicity level in the domain of the IP network, it has been possible to obtain measurable criteria to score actual benchmarks. The work is foreseen to be expanded to other domains in the coming year, possibly involving domains like Datacentre.
- GR ENI 010 Evaluation of categories for AI application to Networks was declared stable as release 4.
- GR ENI 017 Overview of Prominent Control Loop Architectures was declared stable as release 4.
- GS ENI 030 Transformer Architecture for Policy Translation was declared stable as release 4.
- GR ENI 031 Construction and application of fault maintenance network knowledge graphs was declared stable as release 4.
- GR ENI 015 Processing and Management of Intent Policy is expected to be stable in early 2024.
- GR ENI 032 In-situ Flow Information Telemetry (IFIT) Deployment Scenarios is expected to be stable in early 2024.
The ENI#21 meeting was online only as many countries were returning and still affected by travel restrictions or delegates not allowed to travel, and took place on 7-10 March 2022.
- 20 Industry Specification Group (ISG) members present
- 82 documents were handled
Let’s remind that the ISG is open to ETSI members and non-ETSI members alike. The different players in the value chain are welcome to join the ISG effort, contribute to the development of these key specifications and demonstrate Proofs of Concepts (PoCs). To join, please contact: isgsupport@etsi.org
The ETSI ENI Industry Specification Group was created in February 2017, today members come from operators, vendors and research institutes all over the world.
The meeting was productive and achieved progress. The report ETSI GR ENI 012 Reactive In-situ Flow Information Telemetry was published during ENI#21.
An open area is approved, where all stable drafts and previously published deliverables are available.
ENI focuses on improving the operator experience, adding closed-loop AI mechanisms based on context-aware, metadata-driven policies to more quickly recognize and incorporate new and changed knowledge, and hence, make actionable decisions.
ENI has specified a set of use cases and the derived requirements for a generic technology independent architecture of a network supervisory assistant system based on the ‘observe-orient-decide-act’ control loop model. This model gives recommendations to decision-making systems, such as network control and management systems, to adjust services and resources offered based on changes in user needs, environmental conditions and business goals.
Release 2 has specified enhanced use cases, requirements, system architecture, and Proof of Concept (PoC) specifications.
ENI#19 meeting has taken place from 6 to 9 September 2021 and has been performed online because many countries were still affected by travel restrictions or delegates were not allowed to travel. In terms of most relevant figures that denote the heavy work carried out during the meeting, it should be taken into account that:
- 25 ISG members were present, and
- 96 documents were handled.
Let’s remind that the Industry Specification Group (ISG) is open to ETSI members and non-ETSI members alike. The different players in the value chain are welcome to join the ISG effort, contribute to the development of key specifications and demonstrate Proofs of Concepts (PoCs). To join, please contact: isgsupport@etsi.org.
The ETSI ISG was created in February 2017 and today members come from operators, vendors and research institutes all over the world.
Highlights of the meeting
The meeting was productive and progress was achieved in different areas. Deliverable GR ENI 012 on “Reactive In-situ Flow Information Telemetry” was reviewed and declared as stable and it will now proceed to ISG review and approval. It was also decided to re-open the Work Items for the Use cases GS ENI 001 V3.2.1 in release 3 as well as Requirements GS ENI 002 V3.2.1 in Release 3.
GS ENI 005 V2.1.1 on “System Architecture” (Release 2) has completed the Remote Consensus and will be published soon.
The Terminology report GR ENI 004 V2.2.1 is in Remote Consensus until 29 September 2021, after which it is expected to be ratified and published.
An open area where all stable drafts and previously published deliverables are available, was approved.
The ENI#18 meeting was online only as many countries were affected by travel restrictions or delegates not allowed to travel. It took place at 7-10 June 2021.
- 26 ISG members all of which were present.
- Operators: Telefonica, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, NTT, Deutsche Telekom, and Portugal Telecom.
- 115 documents were handled.
Let’s remind that the ISG is open to ETSI members and non-ETSI members alike. The different players in the value chain are welcome to join the ISG effort, contribute to the development of these key specifications and demonstrate Proofs of Concepts (PoCs). To join, please contact: isgsupport@etsi.org
The ETSI ENI Industry Specification Group was created in Feb 2017, today members come from operators, vendors and research institutes all over the world.
The ENI#17 meeting on 8-11 March 2021 was “online only” due to travel restrictions or delegates not allowed to travel.
- 26 were present, 29 were registered,
- Operators were present from: China Telecom, China Mobile, TIM, Deutsche Telekom, and Portugal Telecom, Also, NTT, Telefonica & Vodafone (messaging the Chair),
- 121 documents were handled.
The meeting was very productive and achieved significant progress. The meeting progressed the work-items to stable output on the deliverables Draft report ENI 009 on Data Processing mechanisms planned to be approved at the end of March 2021. Report ENI 008 Intent aware architecture is in publication, the Group Report on the evaluation of categories report ENI 010 is published as v1.1.1 describing measures of automation of the Classes published in 2019 in report ENI 007 v1.1.1.
An open area is approved, for all stable drafts and previously published deliverables are available.
The ENI#16 meeting on 7-10 December 2020 was "online only" due to travel restrictions or delegates not allowed to travel.
- 29 delegates were registered and 29 were present
- Operators were present from: China Telecom, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT, Portugal Telecom, Telefonica and TIM
- Government Ministry Institutes being members from Germany, China, Japan and South Korea
- 163 documents were handled
The meeting was very productive and achieved significant progress. The work-items were progressed to stable output on the deliverables Draft GR ENI 008 on Intent Aware Network Autonomicity and Draft GR ENI 009 on Data Processing mechanisms both planned to be approved at the end of December. Approval as final draft on the evaluation of categories Draft GR ENI 010 describing measures of automation of the Classes published last year in GR ENI 007 v1.1.1.
The ENI#15 meeting took place from 14-17 September 2020 "online only" as many countries were affected by travel restrictions or delegates not allowed to travel.
- 30 were present, 33 were registered
- Operators included: Telefonica, TIM, China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT and Portugal Telecom
- Government Ministry Institutes members came from Germany, China, Japan and South Korea
- 134 documents were handled
The meeting was very productive and achieved significant progress. It progressed the work-items drafting on the deliverables "draft GR ENI 008" on Intent Aware Network Autonomicity and "draft GR ENI 009" on Data Processing mechanisms, both planned to be approved in December. Major progress on the evaluation of categories "draft GR ENI 010" was made discussing measures of automation of the classes published last year in GR ENI 007 V1.1.1. The new draft ENI 022 on iFIT in-situ reactive telemetry framework was progressed well.
The ENI#14 online meeting took place on 22-25 June 2020.
The meeting was very productive and achieved significant progress with 2nd release drafts.
An open area was approved, for all stable drafts and previously published deliverables. The meeting continued drafting within the work items for the next versions on ENI use cases, requirements and Terminology for Release 2.
- Significant progress was made on the learning techniques and the definition of autonomy for AI in ENI 005 work-item RGS/ENI-0016.
- The meeting progressed the work-items drafting on the deliverable of Draft GR ENI 008 on Intent Aware Network Autonomicity.
- Draft GR ENI 009 on Data Processing mechanisms was well progressed in the aspects of data format, data sharing, data management, network telemetry and resource telemetry, etc.
- Major progress on the evaluation of categories Draft GR ENI 010 was made discussing a five-dimensional system of quantification of the Classes published last year in GR ENI 007.
- The Draft ES 011 work-item DGS/ENI-0021 on mapping to 3GPP and ONAP was progressed.
- A new work item (ENI-0022) on In-situ flow information Telemetry (iFIT) Framework was started: Initial draft with skeleton was approved as WI baseline V0.0.1, Key concepts/terminology were approved.
The meeting also approved to send a Liaison Statement to 3GPP S2 & S5 to build a liaison relationship. The LS introduced ETSI Industry Specification Group ENI’s work and asked for further collaboration highlighting ENI 001, ENI 005 and ENI 011.
Due to confinement and travel restrictions, the ENI#13 meeting was successfully organized online only on 17-20 March 2020.
- 32 were present including 8 operators
- 4/5 Government Ministry Institutes are members: China, Japan and South Korea
- 133 documents were handled
A workshop “ENI-Machine Learning in communication networks” was organized on 16 March between two ETSI ISGs, namely ENI and SAI (Securing AI), and ITU-T’s Q20/13 and FG ML5G “Machine Language 5th Generation”, on AI/ML. This workshop was instrumental in enabling synergies between ETSI and the ITU-T in this field and to better understand the needs of industry. ETSI ISG ENI will send the template of ENI Use Cases to the ITU-T groups by liaison for their reference in future work.
As for the meeting, it was very productive and achieved significant progress. After the publication of the approved ENI 006 PoC framework revision, all PoCs will be required to show interworking on an external reference point. The meeting also progressed on the draft reports GR ENI 008 on Intent Aware Network Autonomicity and GR ENI 009 on Data Processing mechanisms. Major progress on the evaluation of categories in Draft GR ENI 010 was made discussing a five dimensional system of quantification of the Classes published last year in GR ENI 007.
Significant progress was made on the learning techniques for AI in the ongoing revision of ENI 005. An open area was also approved for all stable drafts and previously published deliverables. Attendees continued drafting revisions of the next versions on ENI use cases, requirements and Terminology for Release 2.
In addition, we started working on Evaluation of the AI Network Configuration and Mapping of operational systems to ENI architecture. ISG ENI is now progressing into the 2nd Release.
ETSI hosted ENI#12 meeting and Proof of Concept (PoC) Demos in its headquarters in Sophia Antipolis, France, on 9-12 December 2019. The meeting can be summarized as follows:
- 34 delegates present F2F out of 41 registered, (Vodafone & NTT participating with email)
- 7 operators represented, from Asia and Europe
- 110 documents handled
On 9 & 10 December there were demos of most of the completed and progressing PoCs PoC#1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7. This generated discussions and interest with other ETSI members and participants of meetings in the ETSI HQs at the same week. Especially, delegates from Industry Specification Group (ISG) Zero-touch network and Service Management (ZSM) and Technical Committee (TC) SmartM2M.
