From Network Automation to Trustworthy Autonomous Networking in the LLM Era: A Network Control Intelligence Perspective

Since the inception of modern communication networks, the quest for operations automation has never ceased. Yet the evolution of network automation is difficult to characterize with a single maturity ladder. Throughout this history, network control systems have expanded their capabilities for observation, decision support, routine execution, and operator interaction, but these capabilities have not advanced uniformly. Such uneven progress makes the degree of automation an unreliable proxy for trustworthy network-side actuation. The unresolved question is not simply how much automation a system provides, but under what conditions it can be entrusted to change the network state. This paper examines that question through Network Control Intelligence (NCI), a five-axis framework spanning Decision Logic, Adaptability, Knowledge, Control Delegation, and Interface. We use NCI to organize the evolution of network-control systems into three eras: rule-based and scripted automation, programmable and data-driven control, and Large Language Model (LLM)-enabled network operations. Viewed through this framework, the three eras reveal a persistent asymmetry. None of these gains, however, automatically determines when network control should be trusted to change the network state. We frame trustworthy autonomy as a governed alignment between what a system can infer, what it can verify, and what it is authorized to execute. On that basis, the paper develops a reference architecture that separates proposal generation from governed execution, identifies recurring integration patterns for LLM-enabled operations, and derives a research agenda for higher network autonomy under explicit assurance, safety, and governance constraints.