In this session of A Few Easy Steps, we will be doing the initial setup for automation on a Cisco IOS Device. In General this will work on any Cisco IOS Device.  Session Prerequisites: You have a Cisco Console Cable You have a serial port You have a Terminal Program that you can access your …
Source: StaticNAT

So far so good.  In Part 1 we connected to a Cisco switch and and performed basic Authentication with Expect.  Part 2 we expanded on that and added configuration to our code that added a VLAN and configured an interface.  But as I have already stated we are writing quite a bit of code just to …
Source: StaticNAT

When you setup to learn new things you are bound to get a bit sideways once and awhile.  With writing code I think that is even more the case.  You start out with an idea and if your lucky like I have been so far it starts to flow and things just work.  But in …
Source: StaticNAT

I have been working to learn how to use Python to automate interactions with network devices.  Due to what I have in my lab and the fact that we have GNS to model Cisco Networks I started with IOS.  In order to really test out the automation scripts I have been building, I felt it …
Source: StaticNAT

One of the lines that I have taken to heart in Life is  “your only difference between now and ten years from now will be the books you read and the people you meet”.  I read it years ago and since then I have doubled down on my reading.  Prior to this I was reading …
Source: StaticNAT

In this session of A Few Easy Steps, we will build a multi-device ping tool in Python. Session Prerequisites: You must have Python 2.7 installed on the host your are running this from. You need at least two host to test against Our goals for this session are: Build a quick ping testing tool with Python …
Source: StaticNAT

So we started off in Part 1 breaking down what a basic SSH connection and authentication looks like using Python and Expect.  To add some context to this I am using the pexpect library for Python.  This library falls back on system level tools like the the SSH client inside OSX or Linux.  I can’t …
Source: StaticNAT

In this session of A Few Easy Steps, we will install the PIP Package Manager for Python. In General this will work on any Python Install. Session Prerequisites: You must have Super User Access to the system your installing on. Your System must have Python already installed. Your System must have internet access.   Our …
Source: StaticNAT

Most of my career I have been an network operator.  In that time there have been many repetitive tasks that I wish I could have automated but I simply did not not have the skill or knowledge to do anything about it.  So when Big Matt Stone sat down and showed me what writing code in …
Source: StaticNAT

In 2015 I am really surprised that I am writing this.  At this point I have been using email since 1994.  Granted I was a bit ahead of the curve but not by a huge margin.  So If I am generous and say that 1996 was the year that email became a mainstream technology then …
Source: StaticNAT