(Not-so-very) Early Network Automation
If you’re not old enough to know otherwise, you’d think (based on recent hype) that we discovered network automation a few years ago. Not true. One of my readers sent me a link to excellent Managing IP Networks with Free Software presentation from NANOG26 (October 2002).
I found the presentation awesome, nothing new, and extremely sad… all at the same time.
- Awesome – because it is ;)
- Nothing new – because we’ve been doing some of that same stuff a decade earlier with Perl and pre-JavaScript HTML;
- Extremely sad – because I’m still telling people exactly the same thing during my network automation online courses, webinars and workshops, and we’re still not getting anywhere.
1) data in (router configs)
2) do stuff
3) data out
Haven't we?
Raise your hand when the actual config in the box is not the single-source-of-truth anymore...
People involved in testing have been doing it for more than 10 years BUT it was not the hype at that time. We needed to automate repetitive tasks because we could save time.
But this is not new... Happening in the last few thousand years...
And we still cannot product as durable houses as they did in ancient Roman Empire... The concrete they produced is still the best after 2 thousands of years...