Network Programmability and Automation

Preface

Welcome to Network Programmability and Automation!

The networking industry is changing dramatically. The drive for organizations and networking professionals to embrace the ideas and concepts of network programmability and automation is greater now than perhaps it has ever been, fueled by a revolution in new protocols, new technologies, new delivery models, and a need for businesses to be more agile and more flexible in order to compete. But what is network programmability and automation? Let’s start this book with a quick look at how to answer that question.

What This Book Covers

As its title implies, this book is focused on network programmability and automation. At its core, network programmability and automation is about simplifying the tasks involved in configuring, managing, and operating network equipment, network topologies, network services, and network connectivity. There are many, many different components involved—including operating systems that are now seeing far broader use in networking than in the past, the use of new methodologies like Continuous Integration, and the inclusion of tools that formerly might have fallen only in the realm of the system administrator (tools like source code control and configuration management systems). We feel like all of these play a part in the core definition of what network programmability and automation is, so we cover all these topics. Our goal for this book is to enable readers to establish a foundation of knowledge ...