Book Image

Mastering Python Networking

Book Image

Mastering Python Networking

Overview of this book

This book begins with a review of the TCP/ IP protocol suite and a refresher of the core elements of the Python language. Next, you will start using Python and supported libraries to automate network tasks from the current major network vendors. We will look at automating traditional network devices based on the command-line interface, as well as newer devices with API support, with hands-on labs. We will then learn the concepts and practical use cases of the Ansible framework in order to achieve your network goals. We will then move on to using Python for DevOps, starting with using open source tools to test, secure, and analyze your network. Then, we will focus on network monitoring and visualization. We will learn how to retrieve network information using a polling mechanism, ?ow-based monitoring, and visualizing the data programmatically. Next, we will learn how to use the Python framework to build your own customized network web services. In the last module, you will use Python for SDN, where you will use a Python-based controller with OpenFlow in a hands-on lab to learn its concepts and applications. We will compare and contrast OpenFlow, OpenStack, OpenDaylight, and NFV. Finally, you will use everything you’ve learned in the book to construct a migration plan to go from a legacy to a scalable SDN-based network.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Title
Humble Bundle
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
12
OpenStack, OpenDaylight, and NFV

Additional resources


Flask is no doubt a feature-rich framework that is growing in features and community. We have covered a lot of topics in this chapter but still have only scraped the surface of the framework. Besides APIs, you can use Flask for web applications as well as your websites. There are a few improvements that I think we can still make to our network API framework:

  • Separate out the database and each endpoint in its own file so the code is clean and easier to troubleshoot.
  • Migrate from SQLite to other production-ready databases.
  • Use token-based authentication instead of passing the username and password for every transaction. In essence, we will receive a token with finite expiration time upon initial authentication and use the token for further transactions until the expiration.
  • Deploy your Flask API app behind a web server, such as Nginx, along with the Python WSGI server for production use.

Obviously, the preceding improvements will vary greatly from company to company. For example...