In this chapter, we covered the low-level ways to communicate directly to the network devices. Without a way to programmatically communicate and make changes to network devices, there is no automation. We looked at two libraries in Python that allow us to manage the devices that were meant to be managed by CLI. Although useful, it is easy to see how the process can be somewhat fragile. This is mostly due to the fact that the network gears in question were meant to be managed by human beings and not computers.

In the next chapter, we will look at network devices supporting API and intent-driven networking.