RE: Operational feedback on policy redundancy

[Vasilenko Eduard via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

Hi Mubashir,
Looks like it is a 10y old mantra "Intent-based QoS/QoE".
You would better search for a feedback from some Enterprise/Business networking alias, not Telco. It does not makes 
sense for Telco, Telco is the "best effort".
The best $$ from B2B segment (in Telco) that I have seen was 50%:50%, but even for that Telco, B2B traffic was still 
<5%. The rest was B2C (means "subscribers").
5% of traffic could be easily prioritized (simple and hard policy), and that’s it - problem solved. No need for any 
fancy QoS - subscribers (95%) would never pay for it.
The situation is different for Enterprises where QoS may be needed for >50% of traffic. Hence, search your customer 
there.

There were hundreds of attempts for every big Telco to depart from "best effort" and sell 95% of traffic to subscriber 
or OTT (on the other end). All failed, Telco is a "dump pipe", like them or not.

I could say even more - there are example of anti-QoS.
Some Telco implemented advanced traffic engineering to equalize the load on all infrastructure. It is possible to 
improve ROI in the order of 30%.
I have seen a situation when Enterprise customer was asking Telco: "how you did it? The ping from the neighboring 
desktops in the branch has a 10ms different latency to HQ inside the same MPLS VPN". It is because hash has put one 
ping into the short LSP tunnel, but the second one in a different LSP tunnel.
You see: ROI is more important than QoS, QoS could be sacrificed on purpose.

If you change your topic to "Intend-based OAM" (that is actually "closed loop automation" to predict and repair), then 
it make sense for both: Telco and Enterprise.
But then "latency", "jitter" and all other QoS staff should not be mentioned. "Mean time to repair" is the KPI.
Eduard
> -----Original Message-----
> From: manwar--- via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>
> Sent: Saturday, April 4, 2026 21:28
> To: nanog () lists nanog org
> Cc: manwar () illinois edu
> Subject: Re: Operational feedback on policy redundancy
>
> Hi all,
>
> Thanks for the feedback, and apologies if this isn’t the right forum for this kind
> of question.
>
> To clarify: the data comes from an intent-based enterprise network, where the
> intents are high-level requirements collected from a running production
> system.
>
> By redundancy, I mean cases like:
> - A general requirement (e.g., “latency < 20ms for all services”) alongside a
> weaker, service-specific one (e.g., “VoIP latency < 25ms”), where the latter is
> effectively subsumed.
>
> By conflicts, I mean situations like:
> - One intent requiring all traffic to traverse a firewall, while another requires
> no middleboxes for performance-sensitive services.
>
> In this dataset, such cases often appeared without explicit documentation of
> how they were resolved. My assumption is that, in practice, these get handled
> via implicit prioritization or later clarification.
>
> So my main question is: At the high-level goal / intent layer (before translation
> into ACLs, BGP policy, etc.):
> - Do redundant or overlapping requirements tend to exist in practice?
> - Is it common for conflicts to be resolved through undocumented
> clarifications or implicit prioritization?
>
> I do intend to publish the results of this work once the project is complete,
> with the goal of making it useful for operators as well.
>
> Appreciate any insights.
>
> Best regards,
> Mubashir
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