



Network Working Group                                             J. Mao
Internet-Draft                                                     Z. Li
Intended status: Standards Track                                 N. Geng
Expires: 5 May 2026                                             C. Zheng
                                                     Huawei Technologies
                                                         1 November 2025


               APN Framework for Internet of Agent (IoA)
                draft-mao-rtgwg-apn-framework-for-ioa-00

Abstract

   With the rapid development of large model technologies in the AI
   field, it has become possible to develop more intelligent assistant
   software, which is currently referred to as AI Agents in the
   industry.  These agents may come from different manufacturers and be
   deployed on different cloud platforms and regions.  They need to
   communicate and collaborate with each other through the Internet,
   which is called Internet of Agents (IoA).  Different interactions of
   AI agents have varying task requirements, which also lead to
   different demands on the network.  This requires network providing
   various fine granular services for the interactions of AI agents.

   This document proposes the application of the APN framework in the
   IoA scenario and analyzes its necessity.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 5 May 2026.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2025 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.



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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  The Necessity of APN Framework for IoA  . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     4.1.  What is APN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     4.2.  IoA needs Differentiated SLA Guarantee from network . . .   4
     4.3.  IoA needs Secure Transmission from network  . . . . . . .   5
     4.4.  IoA needs Measurement and Visualization from network  . .   6
   5.  APN framework for IoA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     5.1.  Using APN framework in IoA scenarios  . . . . . . . . . .   6
     5.2.  Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       5.2.1.  Requirements for AI Agents  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       5.2.2.  Requirements for Network Devices  . . . . . . . . . .   9
       5.2.3.  Requirements for Network Controller . . . . . . . . .   9
       5.2.4.  Requirements for Protocol Extensions  . . . . . . . .   9
       5.2.5.  Requirements for Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

1.  Introduction

   With the rapid development of large language model technologies in
   the AI field, it has become possible to develop more intelligent
   assistant software, which is currently referred to as AI agents in
   the industry.

   Various types of AI agents have emerged rapidly within a year,
   serving different industries and people's daily lives.  Examples
   include deep research agents, code development agents, text
   generation agents, image generation agents, video generation agents,
   as well as agents for ordering meals, booking flights, booking
   hotels, and travel planning.




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   These agents may come from different manufacturers and be deployed on
   different cloud platforms and regions.  They need to communicate and
   collaborate with each other through the internet.

   For example, a user might request the marketing agent to help
   generate promotional materials for a new router product.  The
   marketing agent might first ask the text generation agent to write
   promotional copy, then request the image generation agent to create
   promotional images, and subsequently ask the video generation agent
   to produce a product introduction video.  Finally, it would collect
   all the promotional materials from these agents, save them on the
   server and notify the user to review them.

   Different interactions of AI agents have varying task requirements,
   which also lead to different demands on the network.  This requires
   network providing various fine granular services for the interactions
   of AI agents.

2.  Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 RFC 2119 [RFC2119] RFC 8174 [RFC8174] when, and only when, they
   appear in all capitals, as shown here.

3.  Terminology

   APN: Application-aware Networking

   IoA: Internet of Agents

4.  The Necessity of APN Framework for IoA


4.1.  What is APN

   APN is a technology that enables networks to be aware of application
   requirements.  Its framework and extension are defined in
   [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-framework] and
   [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].

   These documents propose a new framework, named Application-aware
   Networking (APN), where application-aware information (APN attribute)
   including application-aware identification (APN ID) and application-
   aware parameters (APN Parameters), is encapsulated at network edge
   devices and carried along with the encapsulation of the tunnel used
   by the packet when traversing the APN domain.



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   By APN domain we intend the operator infrastructure where APN is used
   from edge to edge (ingress to egress) and where the packet is
   encapsulated using an outer header incorporating the APN information.
   The APN attribute will facilitate service provisioning and provide
   fine-granularity services in the APN domain.

   In addition, for the extension of the APN framework for application
   side, the APN resources of the APN domain are allocated to
   applications which compose and encapsulate the APN attribute in
   packets.  When network devices in the APN domain receive packets
   carrying APN attribute, they can directly apply policies for these
   traffic flows according to the APN attribute encapsulated by
   applications.

   APN can be applied in IoA scenarios, allowing networks to understand
   the requirements of each agent and its tasks on the network.  This
   enables the network to provide services that match these
   requirements, such as SLA assurance, security, measurement, and
   visualization, thereby improving the performance, security, and
   maintainability of agent interactions.

4.2.  IoA needs Differentiated SLA Guarantee from network

   Different tasks of agent interaction have varying requirements for
   network transmission.

   For example:

   *  Tool invocation tasks emphasize real-time interaction and are
      highly sensitive to latency and jitter, but have low bandwidth
      requirements.

   *  Text generation tasks are relatively sensitive to latency but have
      low bandwidth requirements.

   *  Image generation tasks have low latency requirements but
      relatively high bandwidth demands.

   *  Video generation tasks have low requirements for latency and
      jitter but very high bandwidth demands.

   Each of these tasks can be further divided into real-time interaction
   tasks and background interaction tasks:








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   *  Real-time interaction is used in scenarios where users actively
      operate the system.  Since the final response needs to be
      presented to the user (who waits for the result in front of the
      device), it has higher requirements for real-time performance
      (i.e., latency and jitter).

   *  Background interaction is initiated by the agent software in the
      application's backend system, thus having lower requirements for
      real-time performance.

   These different QoS requirements can be identified in traffic packets
   using APN.  Currently, APN defines four APN parameters:

   *  Bandwidth Requirement Parameter

   *  Delay Requirement Parameter

   *  Delay Variation Parameter

   *  Packet Loss Rate Parameter

   New APN parameters may need to be defined to carry some information
   about AI models, tools, tasks, data, or tokens for some specific IoA
   scenarios.

   By carrying these APN parameters in the messages, the network can
   provide differentiated and targeted services for different
   intelligent agent tasks to ensure a good experience for agent
   interactions.  For example, the network can offer fine-grained SLA
   guarantees, fine-grained network slicing, and fine-grained
   deterministic networking.

4.3.  IoA needs Secure Transmission from network

   Agents interact with each other through the Internet, which may
   require the network to provide security services.

   For example, a food ordering agent on a mobile phone communicates
   with a payment agent on the cloud, and the payment agent communicates
   with a bank agent, which may be on-premises.  These communications
   involve your personal account information and financial data, so they
   require a higher level of security.

   The APN ID or APN parameter can be used to carry encrypted
   transmission requirements.  The network can then create IPsec tunnels
   or quantum transmission channels and direct the traffic of agent
   interactions to these secure channels to prevent eavesdropping,
   tampering, and forgery.



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   For enterprises, they may want to enforce access control to agent
   interactions.  For instance, some agents that can access sensitive
   data are not allowed to collaborate with external agents to prevent
   data leakage.  However, some general-purpose agents are allowed to
   interact with external agents to improve team efficiency.

   The APN ID or APN parameter can be used to carry the identifier of
   the security group to which an agent belongs.  The network can then
   perform access control based on these identifiers to avoid unexpected
   agent interactions and information security risks.

4.4.  IoA needs Measurement and Visualization from network

   When intelligent agents interact through the internet, the quality of
   communication may need to be measured for purposes such as fault
   localization, troubleshooting, and visualization.

   APN IDs can be used to identify AI agents, and network devices can be
   configured to enable network measurement functions (e.g., IFIT) for
   specific agents, thereby enabling in-band measurement of the
   interaction traffic among these agents.  The network controller can
   visually present the communication quality of these agent
   interactions to the network administrators.

5.  APN framework for IoA


5.1.  Using APN framework in IoA scenarios

   The APN architecture can be applied to IoA scenarios, as illustrated
   in the following diagram.  The IoA service requirement that needs to
   be carried in the APN ID or APN parameter essentially belongs to a
   type of application-aware information (i.e., APN attribute).


















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                              +------------------+
                              |   APN-Customer   |
                              +------------------+
                                       |
                                       | NBI
                                       |
                              +------------------+
          --------------------|                  |------------------------
         /                    |  APN-Controller  |                        \
        /              -------|                  |--------                 \
       /              /       +------------------+        \                 \
      |              /       /         |          \        \                 |
+----------+        /       /          | SBI       \        \          +----------+
|AI Agent 1|-\     |       |           |            |        |      /->|AI Agent 3|
+----------+ |  +-----+ +-----+   +---------+   +--------+ +-----+  |  +----------+
             \->|APN  | |APN  |-A-|APN      |-A-|APN     | |APN  |->/
 User side      |-    |-|-    |-B-|-        |-B-|-       |-|-    |      Server side
             /->|Edge | |Head |-C-|Midpoint |-C-|Endpoint| |Edge |->\
+----------+ |  +-----+ +-----+   +---------+   +--------+ +-----+  |  +----------+
|AI Agent 2|-/                                                      \->|AI Agent 4|
+----------+    |------------------APN Domain--------------------|     +----------+

                  Figure 1: Using APN framework in IoA scenarios

   *  AI Agent: Interacts with other AI Agents on the internet, sending
      task requests, asynchronous notifications, and result responses to
      the others.  It can subscribe to network services from operators
      and optionally carry service requirement in the sent traffic via
      APN Attribute.  This means that the AI Agent behaves as an APN-
      capable Application Client or Server as defined in
      [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].

   *  APN-Edge: If AI Agents send traffic without APN attribute, APN-
      Edge device should obtain the APN attribute based on the
      configuration on this device according to the existing information
      in the packet header, create a tunnel encapsulation and add the
      APN attribute into it, and send the packets carrying the APN
      attribute to the APN-Head device finally.  When the packets are
      going to leave the APN domain, APN-Edge should remove the
      encapsulation if APN-Edge and APN-Endpoint are deployed
      separately.  Those are detailly defined in
      [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-framework].  If the APN attribute is added by
      the AI Agent, the functionalities of the APN-Edge need to be
      changed.  APN-Edge can directly transmit the packets to APN-Head
      without encapsulating tunnels.  That is detailly defined in
      [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].





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   *  APN-Head: Identifies the service requirements of IoA based on the
      APN attribute in the packet and provides network services that
      meet these requirements.  This may involve encapsulating the
      packet with a new TE tunnel, placing the packet into an
      appropriate QoS queue, directing the packet to a network slice,
      adding or modifying some fields on the packet to perform network
      measurement, making access policy decisions, performing secondary
      encryption on the packet content, or diverting it to a secure
      channel.

   *  APN-Midpoint: APN-Midpoint provides the path service and enforces
      various policies according to the APN attribute carried in the
      packets.  The APN-Midpoint may also adjust the resource locally to
      guarantee the service requirements depending on a specific policy
      and the APN attribute conveyed by the packet.

   *  APN-Endpoint: the process of the specific network service will end
      at the APN-Endpoint.  If the outer tunnel header for the service
      between the APN-Head and the APN-Endpoint exists, it will be
      removed by the APN-Endpoint.  If the APN attribute is sent by AI
      Agents, the APN-Endpoint MUST keep the APN attribute in packets
      without any change.


5.2.  Requirements


5.2.1.  Requirements for AI Agents

   *  [REQ A01] AI Agent should support to subscribe network services
      from ISP, and get service requirement identifier or the usage
      authorization of service requirement metadata from ISP (out-band)
      or its APN-Controller.

   *  [REQ A02] AI Agent should support to describe the service status,
      the quality of users' experience (QoE), or the key quality
      indicators (KQI) in the APN attribute.

   *  [REQ A03] AI Agent should support to carry the APN attribute in
      the packets of the agent interaction traffic.

   *  TBD









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5.2.2.  Requirements for Network Devices

   *  [REQ D01] APN-Head should support steering the packets based on
      APN attributes into a TE tunnel that satisfies the SLA
      requirements of the agent interaction.

   *  [REQ D02] APN-Head, APN-Midpoint and APN-Endpoint should support
      putting the packets based on APN attributes into a QoS queue
      buffer that satisfies the SLA requirement of the agent
      interaction.

   *  [REQ D03] APN-Head, APN-Midpoint and APN-Endpoint should support
      to steer the packets based on APN attributes into a network slice
      that satisfies the SLA requirement of the agent interaction.

   *  [REQ D04] APN-Head, APN-Midpoint and APN-Endpoint should support
      adding, modifying, or marking some fields of the packets based on
      APN attributes to perform network measurement that satisfies the
      measurement and visualization requirement of the agent
      interaction.

   *  [REQ D05] APN-Head should support enforcing access control to the
      packets based on APN attributes, in accordance with some security
      rules or policies that satisfy the security requirement of the
      agent interaction.

   *  TBD


5.2.3.  Requirements for Network Controller

   *  [REQ C01] APN-Controller should support to notify the allocated
      results of the service requirement identifier, and the usage
      authorization of the service requirement metadata to AI Agent.

   *  [REQ C02] APN-Controller should support to analysis the measure
      data or path data of the agent interaction traffic reported from
      network devices to achieve traffic visualization and network
      troubleshooting.

   *  TBD

5.2.4.  Requirements for Protocol Extensions

   *  [REQ P01] Protocol extensions should be defined for the AI Agent
      to request the APN-Controller in the network to allocated the APN
      resources of the APN domain.




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   *  [REQ P02] Security mechanism should be defined to guarantee for
      that the APN attribute being securely transmitted among the AI
      Agent(user side), AI Agent (server side) and the APN domain.

   *  TBD

5.2.5.  Requirements for Security

   *  [REQ S01] The task contents of AI agent interactions should be
      protected or keep invisible.

   *  [REQ S02] The traffic of sensitive tasks should be steered into a
      secure channel for transmission, such as IPsec tunnels and quantum
      channels.

   *  TBD

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not include an IANA request.


7.  Security Considerations

   TBD


8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC8126]  Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
              Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
              RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

8.2.  Informative References





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   [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework]
              Li, Z. and S. Peng, "Extension of Application-aware
              Networking (APN) Framework for Application Side", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-
              framework-00, 22 October 2023,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-li-rtgwg-apn-
              app-side-framework-00>.

   [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-framework]
              Li, Z., Peng, S., Voyer, D., Li, C., Liu, P., Cao, C., and
              G. S. Mishra, "Application-aware Networking (APN)
              Framework", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-li-
              rtgwg-apn-framework-00, 4 March 2024,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-li-rtgwg-apn-
              framework-00>.

Authors' Addresses

   Jianwei Mao
   Huawei Technologies
   Beijing
   100095
   China
   Email: MaoJianwei@huawei.com


   Zhenbin Li
   Huawei Technologies
   Email: robinli314@163.com


   Nan Geng
   Huawei Technologies
   Email: gengnan@huawei.com


   Chong Zheng
   Huawei Technologies
   Email: zhengchong6@huawei.com












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