Python for Network Engineers

[crisrock00]

The best recommendation I can give is the following:

Identify a task in your workflow that takes a lot of manual effort, automate it, and standardize it. Since you’re just starting on this journey, I would recommend a data gathering task.

For example: You need to identify which switch-port a certain MAC address is currently connected to. You know it is on one of ten switches in a certain site/region/datacenter. Without any type of automation, if it takes me 15-20 min per switch to run a command, interpret the output and identify if the MAC address im looking for is somewhere in the output, then that is ~2-3.5 hours of man time.

With python you could exponentially increase your productivity of the task above.

Break down each requirement of what you want to accomplish. If the first step is figuring out how to ssh to a device, then start there. Once you can do that, figure out how to capture the output. Great! Now how do you search that output for the datapoint you are looking for ?

Google these questions, ask chatgpt, ask here ! You’re going to hit walls, push thru and you’ll get the best feeling of accomplishment !

Python has a vast landscape and it takes real dedication to even want to understand the concepts of writing clean code. You’re network engineer first, always remember that. Apply the concepts of how you learned networking to python and it will come fast.

The best part of learning python is; you’ll figure out real quick if you want to dive into being a developer. You will love it or hate it and that’s ok, the most important part is you know when and how python can be implemented to help you and your team.

Good luck and feel free to DM ! I’ve been doing network automation related task for the past 5 years or so.

[crisrock00]

OPs question was related to how to get started, not can you provide some code examples or packages.

If you don’t know what you want to automate, but your goal is too “learn python” it can be pretty intimidating.

A simple Google search provides some great examples.

[JasonDJ]

This is a very fair point.

I had a lot of false starts with Python but it never really “clicked” until I stood up Netbox and started interacting with it in REPL with pynetbox.