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

[Jeff McAdams via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

On Sun, 2025-03-23 at 18:11 +0100, nanog--- via NANOG wrote:
> On 21/03/25 15:06, Jeff McAdams via NANOG wrote:
> > How awesome would it be if we, as networking folk, could use the
> > same
> > tooling and technologies that all of the rest of the IT world uses
> > to
> > talk to our gear and systems and leverage all of the expertise that
> > exists in other teams? We can't, though, but we insist on
> > developing
> > our own transports and tooling, on developing our data modeling
> > languages, and on developing our own observability protocols.

> There isn't some other universal data model or meta-model out there, 
> that's better that we're obviously stupid not to use. They all suck
> in 
> their own ways. YANG is no worse than any of the others.

YANG is worse than the others, because there's a whole ecosystem of
tooling that isn't YANG (or build around YANG) that the networking
world has forgone using. OK, maybe it isn't that YANG itself is worse
(although, I do think it is, but reasonable people could disagree), but
the ecosystem of tooling around YANG is just pitiful compared to the
tools and techniques that the rest of IT is using.

Let me be clear, it's not about the data model, it's not about
standardized MIBs or YANG models, or whatever. Let each vendor build
their own model that fits their implementation, again, like the rest of
the IT world does when building their systems that are running circles
around the networking world in interoperability.

Of course, YANG isn't a data model at all, it's a method of encoding
data models. OpenConfig is (at least partly) a data model, and it's so
ridiculously complex and malleable as a result of trying to make it
"standard" that it's a royal PITA to use.

> REST isn't even a real protocol. It's an idea that your API should be
> built around state, rather than operations.

Maybe in original theory. In practice is a set of practices and
behaviors that the IT world is using to build amazing things. Yes,
occasionally augmented by some other tooling/protocols/etc.

> That is,
> ConfigurePort(1, {duplex=full, mtu=1500, stp=disabled})
> rather than
> SetPortDuplex(1, full); SetPortMTU(1, 1500); STPDisablePort(1);

> NETCONF is REST.

Whether NETCONF is REST or not isn't the point. The point is that
NETCONF (and YANG) is, effectively, only used in the networking world.
To a rounding error, no SREs use it, no systems engineers use it, no
storage engineers use it, no database engineers use it....

My point is that networking as a whole is so insular, that we can't
even, as a group by and large, see where IT has moved on with the
techniques and tooling that they use, with the result that we're stuck
10 years in the past relative to their capabilities.

-- 
Jeff McAdams
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