Network Automation And Programmability: Reality Versus The Vendor Hype When Considering Legacy And NFV Networks

This talk will focus on: 1 - The journey involved in network automation, at a high level 2 - Programmability as an approach to automation 3 - Legacy and Future Aut …

This talk will focus on: 1 - The journey involved in network automation, at a high level 2 - Programmability as an approach to automation 3 - Legacy and Future Automation approaches 4 - Vendor Hype: NETCONF/YANG and NFV 5 - The reality we face today 6 - An approach to future network automation Programmability is the ability to manage network devices in a similar manner to the way you can manage software and servers in an IT environment today. We are gradually seeing the emergence of network devices that present APIs for use in managing them, such as the Cisco Nexus devices. This is opening up new automation possibilities. There is an architecture, and open source tools such as NAPALM, that make this more of a reality as time progresses, as well. This architecture/toolset allows programmable automation to be applied to legacy equipment that isn’t otherwise capable. Lastly, there is a common misconception that NFV is going to automatically be programmable since it is virtualized, but most VNFs out there today are just revisions of the same software from the physical device placed on a virtual machine. The result is a virtual device with all of the same limitations, in many cases MORE, than the physical device itself had. To make NFV programmable in the near term will require the same architecture as discussed for legacy network devices.