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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Automate router configs
> On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 20:50:57 -0600, "Jason Graun" <[email protected]> said: > Is anybody automating router/switch configs in any manner other then > telnet scripts or Ciscoworks? �I am just trying to get some ideas. are you talking about access routers or backbone/core/peering routers? - for core/backbone routers, use rancid (www.shrubbery.net) whatever your automation scheme, it might not be your primary tool, but it will save you one day Something that doesn't get mentioned on NANOG very much is automating/managing lots and lots of access customers -- ie DSL/T1/Frame etc.. If that interests you, then maybe something I used circa 1999 but I haven't really heard being used recently (but probably is) might give you some ideas (an interview question yesterday reminded me): - we had a Redback SMS 1000 that we could preconfigure ATM PVCs/Frame DLCIs/DS3 Channels for T1s on with all the Layer 2 stuff - all the Layer 3 stuff like routed networks, interface IP addresses, IP filters etc. could be assigned out of radius. I believe Redback had plans to introduce a cable "blade" for their SMS boxes - we took DSL/T1 orders entered into a web front end and had IP/PVC etc. configs stored in an SQL database and updated radius within a few minutes (Covad had (has?) a very nice XML-RPC backend that let us assign the PVCs to our customers etc.. MCI/Worldcom also allowed us to assign channels on a DS3, so our software did that and sent them email with the order) - the Redback had an excellent feature by which, upon receipt of a packet on a hitherto "unbound" PVC (a few weeks after we were setup the DSL/Frame layer-2 circuit would be installed), it would read the config from radius and "bind" the PVC - when a customer cancelled or didn't pay their bill, a script, triggered by certain fields that support/billing-folks could set in the web-frontend, would log into the Redback and "unbind" the circuit Since most frequent "updates" and config changes happened to access routers, this minimized the amount of mundane work a router-monkey had to do. I only hope that all ISPs selling such services are doing things in a nice, automated way. FWIW, my ISP was swallowed by a cable provider who was well subsidized by Cisco. And the rest, you can probably guess. amazed by how little has changed in the ISP world since 2000, Adi
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