Cisco Just Killed The CLI

Posted on December 16, 2014 by networkingnerd

DeadCLI

Gallons of virtual ink have been committed to virtual paper in the last few days with regards to Cisco’s lawsuit against Arista Networks. Some of it is speculating on the posturing by both companies. Other writers talk about the old market vs. the new market. Still others look at SDN as a driver.

I didn’t just want to talk about the lawsuit. Given that Arista has marketed EOS as a “better IOS than IOS” for a while now, I figured Cisco finally decided to bite back. They are fiercely protective of IOS and they have to be because of the way the trademark laws in the US work. If you don’t go after people that infringe you lose your standing to do so and invite others to do it as well. Is Cisco’s timing suspect? One does have to wonder. Is this about knocking out a competitor? It’s tough to say. But one thing is sure to me. Cisco has effectively killed the command line interface (CLI).

“Industry Standards”

EOS is certainly IOS-like. While it does introduce some unique features (see the NFD3 video here), the command syntax is very much IOS. That is purposeful. There are two broad categories of CLIs in the market:

IOS-like – EOS, HP Procurve, Brocade, FTOS, etc
Not IOS-like – Junos, FortiOS, D-Link OS, etc

What’s funny is that the IOS-like interfaces have always been marketed as such. Sure, there’s the famous “industry standard” CLI comment, followed by a wink and a nudge. Everyone knows what OS is being discussed. It is a plus point for both sides.

The non-Cisco vendors can sell to networking teams by saying that their CLI won’t change. Everything will be just as easy to configure with just a few minor syntax changes. Almost like speaking a different dialect of a language. Cisco gains because more and more engineers become familiar with the IOS syntax. Down the line, those engineers may choose to buy Cisco based on familiarity with the product.

If you don’t believe that being IOS-like is a strong selling point, take a look PIX and Airespace. The old PIX OS was transformed into something that looked a lot more like traditional IOS. In ASA 8.2 they even changed the NAT code to look like IOS. With Airespace it took a little longer to transform the alien CLI into something IOS-like. They even lost functionality in doing so, simply to give networking teams an interface that is more friendly to them. Cisco wants all their devices to run a CLI that is IOS-like. Junos fans are probably snickering right now.

In calling out Arista for infringing on the “generic command line interface” in patent #7,047,526, Cisco has effectively said that they will start going after companies that copy the IOS interface too well. This leaves companies in a bit of conundrum. How can you continue to produce an OS with an “industry standard” CLI and hope that you don’t become popular enough to get noticed by Cisco? Granted, it seems that all network switching vendors are #2 in the market somehow. But at what point does being a big enough #2 get the legal hammer brought to bear? Do you have to be snarky in marketing messages? Attack the 800-pound gorilla enough that you anger them? Or do you just have to have a wildly successful quarter?

Laid To REST

Instead, what will happen is a tough choice. Either continue to produce the same CLI year and year and hope that you don’t get noticed or overhaul the whole system. Those that choose not to play Russian Roulette with the legal system have a further choice to make. Should we create a new, non-infringing CLI from the ground up? Or scrap the whole idea of a CLI moving forward? Both of those second choices are going to involve a lot of pain and effort. One of them has a future.

Rewriting the CLI is a dead-end road. By the time you’ve finished your Herculean task you’ll find the market has moved on to bigger and better things. The SDN revolution is about making complex networks easier to program and manage. Is that going to be accomplished via yet another syntax? Or will it happen because of REST APIs and programing interfaces? Given an equal amount of time and effort on both sides, the smart networking company will focus their efforts on scrapping the CLI and building programmability into their devices. Sure, the 1.0 release is going to sting a little. It’s going to require a controller and some rough interface conventions. But building the seeds of a programmable system now means it will be growing while other CLIs are withering on the vine.

It won’t be easy. It won’t be fun. And it’s a risk to alienate your existing customer base. But if your options are to get sued or spend all your effort on a project that will eventually go the way of the dodo your options don’t look all that appealing anyway. If you’re going to have to go through the upheaval of rewriting something from the ground up, why not choose to do it with an eye to the future?

Tom’s Take

Cisco and Arista won’t be finished for a while. There will probably be a settlement or a licensing agreement or some kind of capitulation on both sides in a few years time. But by that point, the fallout from the legal action will have finally finished off the CLI for good. There’s no sense in gambling that you won’t be the next target of a process server. The solution will involve innovative thinking, blood, sweat, and tears on the part of your entire development team. But in the end you’ll have a modern system that works with the new wave of the network. If nothing else, you can stop relying on the “industry standard” ploy when selling your interface and start telling your customers that you are setting the new standard.

End Of The CLI? Or Just The Start?

Posted on April 8, 2014 by networkingnerd

update1-leak3-hero

Windows 8.1 Update 1 launches today. The latest chapter in Microsoft’s newest OS includes a new feature people been asking for since release: the Start Menu. The biggest single UI change in Windows 8 was the removal of the familiar Start button in favor of a combined dashboard / Start screen. While the new screen is much better for touch devices, the desktop population has been screaming for the return of the Start Menu. Windows 8.1 brought the button back, although it only linked to the Start screen. Update 1 promises to add functionality to the button once more. As I thought about it, I realized there are parallels here that we in the networking world can learn as well.

Some very smart people out there, like Colin McNamara (@ColinMcNamara) and Matt Oswalt (@Mierdin) have been talking about the end of the command line interface (CLI). With the advent of programmable networks and API-driven configuration the CLI is archaic and unnecessary, or so the argument goes. Yet, there is a very strong contingent of the networking world that is clinging to the comfortable glow of a terminal screen and 80-column text entry.

Command The Line

API-driven interfaces provide flexibility that we can’t hope to match in a human interface. There is no doubt that a large portion of the configuration of future devices will be done via API call or some sort of centralized interface that programs the end device automatically. Yet, as I’ve said before, engineers don’t like have visibility into a system. Getting rid of the CLI for the sake of streamlining a device is a bad idea.

I’ve worked with many devices that don’t have a CLI. Cisco Catalyst Express switches leap immediately to mind. Other devices, like the Cisco UC500 SMB phone system, have a CLI but use of it is discouraged. In face, when you configure the UC500 using the CLI, you start getting warnings about not being able to use the GUI tool any longer. Yet there are functions that are only visible through the CLI.

Non-Starter

Will the programmable networking world will make the same mistake Microsoft did with Windows 8? Even a token CLI is better than cutting it out entirely. Programmable networking will allow all kinds of neat tricks. For instance, we can present a Cisco-like CLI for one group of users and a Juniper-like CLI for a different group that both accomplish the same results. We don’t need to have these CLIs sitting around resident memory. We should be able to generate them on the fly or call the appropriate interfaces from a centralized library. Extensibility, even in the archaic interface of last resort.

If all our talk revolves around the removal of the tool people have been using for decades to program devices you will make enemies quickly. The talk needs to shift from the death of CLI and more toward the advantages gained through adding API interfaces to your programming. Even if our interface into calling those APIs looks similar to a comfortable CLI, you’re going to win more converts up front if you give them something they recognize as a transition mechanism.

Tom’s Take

Microsoft bit off more than they could chew when they exiled the Start Menu to the same pile as DOSShell and Microsoft Bob. People have spent almost 20 years humming the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” as they click on that menu. Microsoft drove users to this approach. To pull it out from under them all at once with no transition plan made for unhappy users. Networking advocates need to be just as cognizant of the fact that we’re headed down the same path. We need to provide transition options for the die-hard engineers out there so they can learn how to program devices via non-traditional interfaces. If we try to make them quit cold turkey you can be sure the Start Menu discussion will pale in comparison.

Know the Process, Not the Tool

Posted on September 16, 2013 by networkingnerd

rj45process

If there is one thing that amuses me as of late, it’s the “death of CLI” talk that I’m starting to see coming from many proponents of software defined networking. They like to talk about programmatic APIs and GUI-based provisioning and how everything that network engineers have learned is going to fall by the wayside. Like this Network World article. I think reports of the death of CLI are a bit exaggerated.

Firstly, the CLI will never go away. I learned this when I stared working with an Aerohive access point I got at Wireless Field Day 2. I already had a HiveManager account provisioned thanks to Devin Akin (@DevinAkin), so all I needed to do was add the device to my account and I would be good to go. Except it never showed up. I could see it on my local network, but it never showed up in the online database. I rebooted and reset several times before flipping the device over and finding a curious port labeled “CONSOLE”. Why would a cloud-based device need a console port. In the next hour, I learned a lot about the way Aerohive APs are provisioned and how there were just some commands that I couldn’t enter in the GUI that helped me narrow down the problem. After fixing a provisioning glitch in HiveManager the next day, I was ready to go. The CLI didn’t fix my problem, but I did learn quite a bit from it.

Basic interfaces give people a great way to see what’s going on under the hood. Given that most folks in networking are from the mold of “take it apart to see why it works” the CLI is great for them. I agree that memorizing a 10-argument command to configure something like route redistribution is a pain in the neck, but that doesn’t come from the difficulty of networking. Instead, the difficulty lies in speaking the language.

I’ve traveled to a foreign country once or twice in my life. I barely have a grasp of the English language at times. I can usually figure out some Spanish. My foreign language skills have pretty much left me at this point. However, when I want to make myself understood to people that speak another language, I don’t focus on syntax. Instead, I focus on ideas. Pointing at an object and making gestures for money usually gets the point across that I want to buy something. Pantomiming a drinking gesture will get me to a restaurant.

Networking is no different. When I started trying to learn CLI terminology for Brocade, Arista, and HP I found they were similar in some respects but very different in others. When you try to take your Cisco CLI skills to a Juniper router, you’ll find that you aren’t even in the neighborhood when it comes to syntax. What becomes important is *what* you’re trying to do. If you can think through what you’re trying to accomplish, there’s usually a help file or a Google search that can pull up the right way to do things.

This extends its way into a GUI/API-driven programming interface as well. Rather than trying to intuit the interface just think about what you want to do instead. If you want two hosts to talk to each other through a low-cost link with basic security you just have to figure out what the drag-and-drop is for that. If you want to force application-specific traffic to transit a host running an intrusion prevention system you already know what you want to do. It’s just a matter of find the right combination of interface programming to accomplish it. If you’re working on an API call using Python or Java you probably have to define the constraints of the system anyway. The hard part is writing the code to interface to accomplish the task.

Tom’s Take

Learning the process is the key to making it in networking. So many entry level folks are worried about *how* to do something. Configuring a route or provisioning a VLAN are the end goal. It’s only when those folks take a step back and think about their task without the commands that they begin to become real engineers. When you can visualize what you want to do without thinking about the commands you need to enter to do it, you are taking the logical step beyond being tied to a platform. Some of the smartest people I know break a task down into component parts and steps. When you spend more time on *what* you are doing and less on *how* you are doing it, you don’t need to concern yourself with radical shifts in networking, whether they be SDN, NFV, or the next big thing. Because the process will never change even if the tools might.