Network Device API intro "Postman"

Playing around with the basics on network device API calls again.  Postman is a great tool to try things out interactively.  Works great for me as a Chrome plugin.

Kudos to Matt Oswalt for a great post on Nexus 9000 NX-API

Finally, a little bit of super generic Python for getting 'show version' from a switch:

import requests

import json

url='http://YOURIP/ins'

switchuser='USERID'

switchpassword='PASSWORD'

myheaders={'content-type':'application/json-rpc'}

payload=[

          {

                  "jsonrpc": "2.0",

                  "method": "cli",

                  "params": {

                             "cmd": "show version",

                                    "version": 1

                            },

                   "id": 1

           }

          ]

response = requests.post(url,data=json.dumps(payload), headers=myheaders,auth=(switchuser,switchpassword)).json()

DevOps for Network Engineers

Network Engineers need to not only think about network programmability and automation.  Take a higher look into reducing operations and moves/adds/changes into the smallest incremental steps first.  Here are some great references to give you some thoughts on this.

What is DevOps in Simple English – Rackspace

Ivan Pepelnjak @ioshints describes how "Infrastructure as Code" makes sense

@dave_tucker gives a nice "NetOps to DevOps" plan

Bimodal IT – Lydia Leong of Gartner

BONUS:  Familiarize yourself with revision control.  @DavidJohnGee describes Git

Larger, quicker, mobile Networking as in IoT

I was wondering how thousands of new, tiny, mobile devices (such as sensor networks and the Internet of Things) might be assisted by IPv6.   Think about the obvious needs introduced:

1) Many Addresses  - estimates range from 10's to 100's for every person

2) Low Memory  - sensors will be small and somewhat cheap

3) Mobile -  where are they going to be and will they be needed elsewhere tomorrow?

4) Low-touch  -  by sheer numbers managing one-by-one is an impossibility

The current Internet Protocol dominant on the Internet (IPv4) isn't so upstanding for this.  The newer version (IPv6) is looking much more handy!  Found this article from a European Research project looking into just that.

www.iot6.eu

Check out all their material

IoT Links Feb-2015

This student paper gives a pretty decent lay of the land.
https://sites.google.com/a/cortland.edu/the-internet-of-things/summary

Cisco's 2011 whitepaper framed things up nicely and is still very relevant.
www.cisco.com/web/.../IoT_IBSG_0411FINAL.pdf

Ecobee, Lyric, and Nest...oh my!
http://smartthermostatguide.com/

Big Data, analytics, and finding value in Internet of things.
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2889975/careers/future-proof-your-it-career-8-tech-areas-that-will-still-be-hot-in-2020.html

Sensor technology will be all the difference for IoT
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2015/02/24/a-butterfly-wing-inspired-sensor-may-save-your-life/

Always wanted my cell phone mic right inside my mouth!
https://wtvox.com/2014/10/top-10-implantable-wearables-soon-body/