



Network Working Group                                      Y. Zhang, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                             X. Zhang, Ed.
Intended status: Standards Track                             Y. Yue, Ed.
Expires: 8 January 2026                                     China Unicom
                                                             7 July 2025


Problem Statement and Gap Analysis for Agent-enabled Mobile Core Network
                    draft-zhang-agent-gap-network-00

Abstract

   This document provides the problem statement and gap analysis of
   agent-enabled mobile core network.

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
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 8 January 2026.

Copyright Notice

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

   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
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.






Zhang, et al.            Expires 8 January 2026                 [Page 1]

Internet-Draft  Problem and Gap for Agent-enabled Networ       July 2025


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Problem statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Changes in Interaction Content  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.2.  Changes in Interaction Entity . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.3.  Changes in Interaction Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     4.1.  Network for Agent Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     4.2.  Agent-based Network Enhancement . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Gap Analysis  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     5.1.  GAP analysis of service capabilities  . . . . . . . . . .   4
       5.1.1.  User-Driven Service Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
       5.1.2.  Communication Dumb Pipeline Model . . . . . . . . . .   4
     5.2.  GAP analysis of foundational capabilities . . . . . . . .   5
       5.2.1.  Fixed NF and Processes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       5.2.2.  Network Intelligence  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       5.2.3.  Network Programmability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   8.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6

1.  Introduction

   With the development of AI technology, AI Agent, as advanced form of
   AI capability, is rapidly becoming an important evolutionary
   direction.  While traditional AI (such as ChatGPT) mainly relies on
   user input commands, the Agent can independently think, make
   decisions, and perform complex tasks, just like an AI assistant,
   capable of independently completing multi-step operations.  The
   development of Agent has directly brought about profound changes in
   terminal form and business content.  Besides, it will also profoundly
   change the traditional mobile network architecture and business
   model.

   Agent communication is an important reference and connotation of 6G
   mobile network evolution.  The emergence of Agent brings new
   communication terminal forms and business scenarios, which brings new
   demands to the transmission protocols and network capabilities of
   mobile networks, and 6G needs to evolve and enhance new capabilities
   as a communication bridge for next-generation Agent services and
   terminals.  Also, 6G can improve its own level of intelligence by
   taking advantage of the perception and decision-making of the Agent.






Zhang, et al.            Expires 8 January 2026                 [Page 2]

Internet-Draft  Problem and Gap for Agent-enabled Networ       July 2025


   From the document of 3GPP Technical Report (TR) 22.870 [TR22.870],
   the AI Agent is defined as an automated intelligent entity capable of
   e.g. interacting with its environment, acquiring contextual
   information, reasoning, self-learning, decision-making, executing
   tasks (autonomously or in collaboration with other Al Agents) to
   achieve a specific goal.  The current content of the report already
   provides some use cases for AI Agent communication.  The use cases
   are mainly focused on Networt for AI Agent, including scenarios such
   as connected cars, takeaway booking, child care, and earthquake
   rescue.  There are fewer use cases in AI Agent for Network, focusing
   on network operation and maintenance.

2.  Conventions and Definitions

   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 RFC2119 [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.  Abbreviations and definitions used in this
   document: *AI: Artificial Intelligence. *NF: Network Function.

3.  Problem statement

   The AI Agent brings changes to the network in terms of interaction
   content, interaction object and interaction protocol.

3.1.  Changes in Interaction Content

   The traditional communication content is mainly singlemodality such
   as text, video/image, and voice for the transmission of transparent
   media.  The AI Agent integrate physical and virtual world, driving
   the evolution of communication interaction content to multimodality
   data, such as the perception and transmission of multimodality data
   of actions, states/emotions, space, and haptics.

3.2.  Changes in Interaction Entity

   AI Agent extend the scope of traditional interaction entities, which
   are no longer limited to simple dialogs between human-machine-objects
   and enabling based on fixed processes.  Instead, it extends to multi-
   entity interactions within AI Agent(such as tools), between AI
   Agents, and between AI Agent and current network objects (such as
   network elements, application systems, IoT devices).  The extension
   of interaction entities not only enhances the autonomous
   collaboration capability, but also promotes more complex and
   intelligent task collaboration and decision-making modes.





Zhang, et al.            Expires 8 January 2026                 [Page 3]

Internet-Draft  Problem and Gap for Agent-enabled Networ       July 2025


3.3.  Changes in Interaction Protocol

   AI Agent can autonomous decision-making, semantic understanding, and
   learning-evolution capabilities, and interact with users in a more
   natural and flexible way.  In AI Agent communication, the traditional
   protocol paradigm based on fixed syntax and static layering is
   broken.  A transmission protocol with semantic understanding, dynamic
   negotiation, and autonomous collaboration is required.  Also, the new
   protocol can support multimodality data transfer and transformation.

4.  Use Cases

4.1.  Network for Agent Communication

   TBD.

4.2.  Agent-based Network Enhancement

   TBD.

5.  Gap Analysis

5.1.  GAP analysis of service capabilities

5.1.1.  User-Driven Service Mechanism

   The current communication network is mainly a user-driven service
   model, in which the user initiates a communication request, and the
   network passively responds and establishes a connection to provide
   communication services.  For AI Agent communication, it is not only a
   simple data transmission, but also an interactive behavior with the
   goal of completing a specific task.  The network needs to analyze and
   understand the task and behavior.  And perceive the task context
   state, so as to better optimize the allocation of resources to meet
   the user's needs.  The network needs to sense and understand the
   tasks and behaviors of, as well as perceive the task context state,
   so as to better optimize the resource allocation and guarantee that
   tasks are completed on demand.

5.1.2.  Communication Dumb Pipeline Model

   The traditional mobile network serves as a 'dumb pipeline', providing
   undifferentiated basic bit stream transmission services, mainly
   guaranteeing communication indexes such as bandwidth and delay.  In
   AI Agent communication, the traffic often presents multimodality,
   upstream and downstream peer-to-peer, and short bursts, etc.  The
   network require the capability to support dynamic, semantic, and
   multimodality communication traffic demand brought by AI Agent



Zhang, et al.            Expires 8 January 2026                 [Page 4]

Internet-Draft  Problem and Gap for Agent-enabled Networ       July 2025


   communication.

5.2.  GAP analysis of foundational capabilities

5.2.1.  Fixed NF and Processes

   The current mobile core network is characterized by precise
   definition, serial processing and linkage impact.  Events trigger the
   serial processing of multiple NFs.  NFs and processes are basically
   fixed, and the linkage impact will be produced when the functions are
   changed.

5.2.2.  Network Intelligence

   Although the intelligence technology has been introduced into the
   current mobile network, it is mainly realized through optimization
   and transformation at the existing architectural level, which is
   still a 'plug-in' intelligence and can only provide single
   intelligence or local enhancement capability.  For example, the 5GC
   NWDAF has the ability of intelligent sensing and analyzing, it cannot
   make autonomous decision scheduling based on the analysis results.
   For AI Agent communication, mobile networks should consider
   endogenous intelligence at the early stage of design and build AI-
   native network capabilities.

5.2.3.  Network Programmability

   The current network provides services through the collaboration of
   NFs and deployed services, it is difficult to realize network-level
   update, and the network programmability is insufficient.  In
   capability opening, the closed operation of NFs brings about a lack
   of openness to external capabilities.  In addition, the network also
   lacks the capabilities to call and respond to external capabilities.

6.  Security Considerations

   TBD

7.  IANA Considerations

   TBD

8.  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>.



Zhang, et al.            Expires 8 January 2026                 [Page 5]

Internet-Draft  Problem and Gap for Agent-enabled Networ       July 2025


   [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>.

Authors' Addresses

   Yaomin Zhang (editor)
   China Unicom
   Beijing
   China
   Email: zhangym2533@chinaunicom.cn


   Xuebei Zhang (editor)
   China Unicom
   Beijing
   China
   Email: zhangxb170@chinaunicom.cn


   Yi Yue (editor)
   China Unicom
   Beijing
   China
   Email: yuey80@chinaunicom.cn


























Zhang, et al.            Expires 8 January 2026                 [Page 6]
