Chou - Mastering Python networking: advanced networking with Python

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

Copyright 2017 Packt Publishing

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First published: June 2017

Production reference: 1230617

ISBN 978-1-78439-700-5

www.packtpub.com

Over my 20 years in computer networking, I have been lucky to work on a handful of popular, large-scale systems. If you had asked me in 2001, I would have told you my favorite project was AOL Instant Messenger. To scale to the size that we did in the early days, we had to create our own APIs for provisioning, security, and control over all aspects of the service--all aspects save the physical network, that is. This was a pain, but we lived with it as compute and storage needs were dynamic while network needs stayed reasonably static. In 2010, while working on what would become Microsoft Azure, it was clear that usage patterns have changed. Compute and storage have now been disaggregated, so it is more important than ever to have non-blocking connectivity and the ability to utilize any overlay technology required by the workload.

Within the last few years, we have seen quite a shift in thinking, from network device vendors adding APIs and Python scripting environments to their devices in the hope of them being driven programmatically. In this book, Eric Chou helps us gain a thorough understanding of interfacing with networks and network devices using Python, from interacting with a single device to large numbers of devices with complex automation using Ansible. Then, he takes us to my favorite topics of network monitoring and security, as well as an array of OpenFlow projects controlled through the Python-based Ryu SDN controller.

Eric and I worked together at Microsoft, where we built Microsoft DEMon, an Openflow-based network packet broker. Eric's deep understanding of Python and his love for automation show in every project we work on together. I have had the pleasure to see many of Eric's examples from this book used in real life and proven in actual projects. In Mastering Python Networking, Eric is adding some theory and a set of practical examples taken from real problems that he has solved.

Rich Groves

Director of R&D at A10 Networks

Eric Chou is a seasoned technologist with over 16 years of experience. He has managed some of the largest networks in the industry while working at Amazon and Microsoft and is passionate about network automation and Python. He shares this deep interest in these fields through his teachings as a Python instructor, blogger, and active contributor to some of the popular Python open source projects. Currently, Eric holds two patents in IP Telephony and is a principal engineer at A10 Networks with a focus on product research and development in the field of security.

Allen Su, CCIE no. 13871 (Routing and Switching, Service Provider, Security), is currently a senior network and cloud security engineer at Microsoft, where he is driving innovative design and engineering of secure edge services and automation capabilities.

Allen is a networking industry veteran, having spent the last 15 years in various engineering and architectural roles. Prior to Microsoft, Allen was at Arista Networks, where he worked with and helped some marquee cloud providers build their cloud-scale networks and define and develop their network automation framework and strategy. Before his tenure at Arista, Allen spent a significant portion of his career at Cisco, learning the intricacies of networking, which he leveraged to design, architect, and build some of the worlds largest networks.

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