Book Image

Python Network Programming Techniques

By : Marcel Neidinger
Book Image

Python Network Programming Techniques

By: Marcel Neidinger

Overview of this book

Network automation offers a powerful new way of changing your infrastructure network. Gone are the days of manually logging on to different devices to type the same configuration commands over and over again. With this book, you'll find out how you can automate your network infrastructure using Python. You'll get started on your network automation journey with a hands-on introduction to the network programming basics to complement your infrastructure knowledge. You'll learn how to tackle different aspects of network automation using Python programming and a variety of open source libraries. In the book, you'll learn everything from templating, testing, and deploying your configuration on a device-by-device basis to using high-level REST APIs to manage your cloud-based infrastructure. Finally, you'll see how to automate network security with Cisco’s Firepower APIs. By the end of this Python network programming book, you'll have not only gained a holistic overview of the different methods to automate the configuration and maintenance of network devices, but also learned how to automate simple to complex networking tasks and overcome common network programming challenges.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Revisiting the NETCONF and YANG modules

Before jumping straight into the Python code, let's revisit how NETCONF works and how we use YANG modules to describe the data model used to retrieve or modify our device configuration. At its core, NETCONF works by sending operations, which are described in eXtended Markup Language (XML), to a device. The device then carries out that operation and returns information.

The core operations defined by the NETCONF protocol are as follows:

  • <get>: This is used to retrieve information about the state of a device.
  • <get-config>: This is used to retrieve an entire configuration (for example, the entire running configuration of your device).
  • <edit-config>: This is used to edit a configuration (for example, to change the entire running configuration on your device). Here, edit can refer to creating, deleting, or combining configuration variables.
  • <copy-config>: This is used to copy from one configuration...