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Mastering Python Networking

By : Eric Chou

4.9 (10)

Mastering Python Networking

4.9 (10)

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.

Preface

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

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Free Chapter

Review of TCP/IP Protocol Suite and Python

Review of TCP/IP Protocol Suite and Python

An overview of the internet

The OSI model

Client-server model

Network protocol suites

Python language overview

Summary

Low-Level Network Device Interactions

Low-Level Network Device Interactions

The challenges of the CLI

Constructing a virtual lab

Python Pexpect library

The Python Paramiko library

Looking ahead

Summary

APIs and Intent-Driven Networking

APIs and Intent-Driven Networking

Infrastructure as code

The Cisco API and ACI

The Python API for Juniper networks

The Arista Python API

Vendor-neutral libraries

Summary

The Python Automation Framework – Ansible Basics

The Python Automation Framework – Ansible Basics

A more declarative framework

A quick Ansible example

The advantages of Ansible

The Ansible architecture

Ansible networking modules

The Ansible Cisco example

The Ansible Juniper example

The Ansible Arista example

Summary

The Python Automation Framework – Beyond Basics

The Python Automation Framework – Beyond Basics

Ansible conditionals

Ansible loops

Templates

Group and host variables

The Ansible Vault

The Ansible include and roles

Writing your own custom module

Summary

Network Security with Python

Network Security with Python

The lab setup

Python Scapy

Access lists

The Syslog search

Other tools

Summary

Network Monitoring with Python – Part 1

Network Monitoring with Python – Part 1

Lab setup

SNMP

Python for data visualization

Python for Cacti

Summary

Network Monitoring with Python – Part 2

Network Monitoring with Python – Part 2

Graphviz

Flow-based monitoring

Elasticsearch (ELK stack)

Summary

Building Network Web Services with Python

Building Network Web Services with Python

Comparing Python web frameworks

Flask and lab setup

Introduction to Flask

Network resource API

Network dynamic operations

Security

Additional resources

Summary

AWS Cloud Networking

AWS Cloud Networking

AWS setup

AWS network overview

Virtual private cloud

Direct Connect and VPN

Network scaling services

Other AWS network services

Summary

Working with Git

Working with Git

Introduction to Git

Setting up Git

Git usage examples

Git with Python

Automating configuration backup

Collaborating with Git

Summary

Continuous Integration with Jenkins

Continuous Integration with Jenkins

Traditional change-management process

Introduction to continuous integration

Installing Jenkins

Jenkins example

Jenkins with Python

Continuous integration for Networking

Summary

Test-Driven Development for Networks

Test-Driven Development for Networks

Test-driven development overview

Topology as code

More on Python testing

Writing tests for networking

Pytest in Jenkins

Summary

Other Books You May Enjoy

Other Books You May Enjoy

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Writing tests for networking

So far, we have been mostly writing tests for our Python code. We have used both the unittest and pytest libraries to assert True/False and equal/Non-equal values. We were also able to write mocks to intercept our API calls when we do not have an actual API-capable device but still want to run our tests.

A few years ago, Matt Oswalt announced the Testing On Demand: Distributed (ToDD) validation tool for network changes. It is an open source framework aimed at testing network connectivity and distributed capacity. You can find more information about the project on its GitHub page: https://github.com/toddproject/todd. Oswalt also talked about the project on this Packet Pushers Priority Queue 81, Network Testing with ToDD: https://packetpushers.net/podcast/podcasts/pq-show-81-network-testing-todd/.

In this section, let's look at how we can write...

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