[NANOG] Re: The Network CLI -- Love it ? Hate it? Needed?

[Dmitry Sherman via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

Ask F5 what do they think
Best regards,
Dmitry Sherman
[X]

On 19 Mar 2025, at 0:09, Elmar K. Bins via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:

Hi Mark, folks,

IMHO there's no reason to use a GUI on a routing or switching platform; it just
makes things

- more complicated to achieve (properly)
- more difficult to replicate
- impossible to automate

apart from

- creating CPU load and memory overhead
- blowing up the code tenfold
- inviting protocol attacks and incurring CVEs galore
- everybody cooking their own and nothing being familiar on mixed platforms

Ggraphing etc? Fine, but why would that have to be built into the box?

Debugging? Yeah, try tweaking a hundred times through a GUI.

Orchestration? If you need some kind of process-oriented software for this,
automation is available with a standard protocol (netconf), and it's being used
with different levels of success (smart implementations allow CLI add-ins.)
Nobody in their right mind clicks a config.

I can, btw, see a case for a fancier frontend on firewalls, where the changes
will trigger automation in the backend. But still the first thing to disable on
any network gear - for me - is disabling that ***censored*** that is being
forced on us.

Just my 2 Eurocents, from an old fart,
Elmar.

Do you love the CLI? Do you hate the CLI? Would you -- or do you already
-- enjoy a world where you never need to touch the CLI, to manage your
network?
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