Book Image

Mastering Python Networking - Second Edition

By : Eric Chou
Book Image

Mastering Python Networking - Second Edition

By: Eric Chou

Overview of this book

Networks in your infrastructure set the foundation for how your application can be deployed, maintained, and serviced. Python is the ideal language for network engineers to explore tools that were previously available to systems engineers and application developers. In this second edition of Mastering Python Networking, you’ll embark on a Python-based journey to transition from traditional network engineers to network developers ready for the next-generation of networks. This book begins by reviewing the basics of Python and teaches you how Python can interact with both legacy and API-enabled network devices. As you make your way through the chapters, you will then learn to leverage high-level Python packages and frameworks to perform network engineering tasks for automation, monitoring, management, and enhanced security. In the concluding chapters, you will use Jenkins for continuous network integration as well as testing tools to verify your network. By the end of this book, you will be able to perform all networking tasks with ease using Python.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Low-Level Network Device Interactions

In Chapter 1, Review of TCP/IP Protocol Suite and Python, we looked at the theories and specifications behind network communication protocols. We also took a quick tour of the Python language. In this chapter, we will start to dive deeper into the management of network devices using Python. In particular, we will examine the different ways in which we can use Python to programmatically communicate with legacy network routers and switches.

What do I mean by legacy network routers and switches? While it is hard to imagine any networking device coming out today without an Application Program Interface (API) for programmatic communication, it is a known fact that many of the network devices deployed in previous years did not contain API interfaces. The intended method of management for those devices was through Command Line Interfaces (CLIs) using...