The Two “Network As Code” Domains
You’ve probably heard the term “network programmability” at this point. You probably also heard it equated to anything to do with code, automation, and networking. This was not always the case.
Network programmability really first hit the big time back in 2011 in the early days of the public OpenFlow discussion. That phrase was almost universally understood to be a data plane concept – because it was describing the revolutionary ideas brought up by abstracting away a forwarding pipeline. “You mean I can program my network device directly?” Network programmability.
I was inspired by a thread that my friend Josh kicked off with this tweet:
I am far from being a dev but I am no longer scared to learn to code. Thanks to the folks helping me start to get it.
— joshobrien77 (@joshobrien77) April 23, 2015
An interesting dialogue followed, and I felt compelled to address the problem caused by marketing departments muddying the waters of what would otherwise be a very simple idea.
Now obviously it’s too late to “right the wrong” that resulted from marketing and journalism engines chugging at full steam trying Continue reading