Vendor neutral interface for network device configuration

Abstract

Efficient network configuration of heterogeneous network devices from different vendors is a great challenge. Networking personnel have to adopt to different vendor specific CLIs when necessary, where they have to go through a learning curve to get adapted to a new product. Having to go through a learning process makes such personnel think twice before recommending a product of a different vendor, even though it offers more value for money. Even if they recommend a different vendor based product with hesitation, the implementation and troubleshooting of a networking solution with a new vendor based product increases the duration and cost of the project due to addition of training time and cost. This research aims to introduce a simple vendor-neutral interface and command converter interface as a simple and efficient approach to overcome issues faced by networking personnel when managing heterogeneous network devices by different vendors. It also aims to make networking infrastructures vendor neutral in all aspects by contributing specially to network configuration management area.