Beyond the Knowledge Plane: An Inference Plane to Support the Next Generation Internet

The Knowledge Plane was defined as a global, decentralized network overlay which used cognitive information processing to build a self-managing network. This paper builds on that work to address a number of its shortcomings, including a means to express business goals to drive the set of network services and resources provided, the ability to work with and control heterogeneous products and technologies, and the integration of wired and wireless networks using autonomic principles.