Every network engineering course runs into the same wall eventually: students spend more time proving their configuration is correct than actually learning why it should look that way. ping, traceroute, and squinting at show run output only get you so far, and once the lab session ends, so does your… Read more »
As modern enterprise networks grow in scale and complexity, configuration errors remain a primary cause of unexpected outages and security vulnerabilities. Traditionally, network engineers validated design changes by setting up resource-intensive physical hardware labs or running emulation environments like GNS3. Once changes were applied to production, verification relied on manual,… Read more »
A few years ago I started to include module on model-driven network management in my graduate course. I had a sufficient background in network automation and knew about what NETCONF, gNMI, and YANG were, and why they mattered. What I did not have was the hands-on experience that comes from… Read more »
Abstract Network design involves making decisions within constraints, balancing factors like cost, reliability, scalability, and simplicity. This document reviews essential design principles with a practical engineering focus, using a “Hierarchy of Needs” to ensure foundational aspects such as connectivity and integrity (reliability and security) are addressed before higher-level features like… Read more »
Network automation has been discussed for years, but for many network engineers it still feels abstract: promising in theory, intimidating in practice. Network Automation Cookbook, 2nd Ed., by Christian Adell, Jeffrey Kala, and Karim Okasha, positions itself as a practical bridge, offering more than 100 “recipes” that demonstrate how automation… Read more »
The Problem: Growing Complexity and the Need for Automation Today’s network administrators face significant challenges in managing complex infrastructure. These include deploying configuration changes quickly and with minimum disruption to network operations, gaining a clear view into network activity, and reacting to unexpected incidents in a timely manner. Beyond these,… Read more »
gNMIc is a gNMI CLI client that provides full support for gNMI RPCs. Nokia developed the gNMIc and donated it to the open-source community, OpenConfig. gNMIc is widely used by the open-source community, developers, and networking vendors. To understand how gNMIc works, let’s introduce gNMI. What is gNMI? gNMI (gRPC… Read more »
Batfish is an open source network configuration validation and verification software. The article reviews and demonstrates some major features of the software by using it to analyze configuration files of three small networks.