Network as code , or NaC, isn’t just a fresher, trendier term for software-defined networking. It also means applying infrastructure as code, or IaC, practices to network engineering and administrating. Networking as code has given rise to developer operations specialized for networking. It’s called NetDevOps. It enables agile, application-centric networking for multicloud.

IaC methodology configures infrastructure using code rather than a user interface or command line interface. It allows people to write configuration settings with configuration files and then apply them.

Networking has been stuck in a rut for years. It’s arriving a bit late to the agile party. Many network professionals must round a learning curve to get their NaC and NetDevOps credentials.

“I’m a believer in education, and to really make a change and in the industry, we have to educate,” said Jason Edelman (pictured), founder of Network to Code LLC. 

Edelman spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Cisco Live event in Barcelona, Spain. They discussed next-gen networking and the need to educate engineers and admins in new methods. (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE spotlights Network to Code in our Startup of the Week feature.

Rounding the learning curve to NaC chops

Edelman made the journey from traditional network engineer to NaC pro. He spent more than a decade managing and deploying networks and acting in a private capacity supporting Cisco Systems Inc. infrastructure.

Around 2013, working for a large Cisco value-added reseller, he gained access to Cisco’s One Platform Kit (onePK). OnePK is a toolkit for building custom applications that interact with Cisco routers and switches. Users can build automation directly into the network. It was one of the very first software developer kits to allow programming against the router in a switch, according to Edelman. 

“That, for me, was just eye opening,” he said. With no prior coding experience, Edelman used onePK as his on-ramp to learn about Python, Java, etc., in the context of networking. In six weeks, he had a demo of Puppet and Ansible automated network devices. 

Network engineers have a world of new possibilities before them, and exploiting them starts with training, Edelman pointed out. In addition to its network automation services and DevOps tooling, Network to Code offers next-gen networking courses.

“You really can’t change the methodology of network operations without being aware of what’s possible,” Edelman stated. “And it really does kind of come back to training … whether it is an on-demand streaming instructor or reading a book.”

Filling in the blanks for multicloud networking

In Q3 2018, the global Ethernet switch market was worth $ 7.3 billion, according research from Statista.com. At that time, Cisco held a global market share of Ethernet switches of around 54.4 percent. Cisco is one among a number of companies pivoting into software solutions for distributed networking. It and VMware Inc., for example, are both cracking at the network bottleneck choking multicloud.

Bringing networking into the IaC fold is one way to make it agile and programmable enough for multicloud.

At Network to Code, “right now, there’s a lot of focus around multicloud and data center,” Edelman said. It is striving to make sure whatever automation users deploy, and whatever tools they use, they have uniform-looking field operations. 

Developers and networkers share hats at DevNet

Cisco’s DevNet community is a place for networkers and developers to work together on multicloud snafus. It provides the kind of training that infrastructure pros need to jump into code, according to Edelman.

“There’s really a very good structured learning path to get started through DevNet,” he said.  

The 500,000-strong community is good at easing infrastructure people into coding, according to Susie Wee, vice president and chief technology officer of DevNet, who recently spoke to theCUBE.

“When we were pushing it, we were just saying, ‘Hey, the network is changing. The network is going to be programmable. The network is going to have APIs [application program interfaces],” said Wee. “And since then … what we’re seeing is that people are ready to code.”

NetDevOps helps them keep the flow and deployment of code smooth and agile, she said in a separate interview. “Suddenly, it’s not only compute that works in a DevOps pipeline, but the network is also participating in this NetDevOps pipeline. Now, with NetDevOps, you can create and treat the network as code,” she said, adding it was possible to roll out new security policies as software code.

Take a bite out of basics to start

This doesn’t mean that networkers must necessarily work two jobs now, Edelman explained. “I don’t believe every network engineer should know how to code. That was my on-ramp because of our partnership with Cisco at the time and learning onePK and programming languages,” he said.

He does believe that engineers and admins should learn at least the broader principles of NaC, network automation and NetDevOps.

Edelman co-authored a book with Scott Lowe and Matt Oswalt titled, “Network Programmability and Automation: Skills for the Next-Generation Network Engineer.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Cisco Live event.

Photo: SiliconANGLE