With ever increasing complexity and dynamicity of communication networks, intelligent network operation and maintenance has become more important to network operators. With the fast development of artificial intelligence, concepts such as “zero touch,” “intent-based,” “knowledge-defined,” and “self-driving” networks have become well known in the networking community for a great vision of making networks automatically manageable and responsive to user demands. This article discusses how to achieve zero touch networks from the perspective of language-like systems. We propose a novel hierarchical “language” framework dedicated for networks to enable the zero touch network, which ranges from symbolizing network components, a unified framework for understanding network systems, to the logical description with network semantics. A case study based on the proposed language framework is provided. Finally, we discuss the challenges and open issues of intelligence models for zero touch networks.

中文翻译：

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走向零接触网络：从分层语言系统的角度来看

随着通信网络的复杂性和动态性不断增加，智能网络运维对网络运营商来说变得越来越重要。随着人工智能的快速发展，“零接触”、“基于意图”、“知识定义”和“自动驾驶”网络等概念已在网络社区中广为人知，这是一个使网络成为现实的伟大愿景。可自动管理并响应用户需求。本文从类语言系统的角度讨论如何实现零接触网络。我们提出了一种专用于网络的新型分层“语言”框架，以实现零接触网络，其范围从符号化网络组件、理解网络系统的统一框架到具有网络语义的逻辑描述。提供了基于建议的语言框架的案例研究。最后，我们讨论了零接触网络智能模型的挑战和未解决的问题。