Network management and monitoring is at the heart of nearly all network operations, and yet the methodologies and technology used in this critical area are lagging far behind. Despite the growing adoption of SDN and open networking, core elements of network management remain relegated to proprietary, arcane interfaces (e.g., CLIs) and inflexible legacy protocols (e.g., SNMP). In this talk, we describe OpenConfig, a group of global-scale network operators working to develop open, vendor-neutral APIs for configuration and network monitoring. Native support for OpenConfig APIs are now being developed by major networking vendors to support programmatic configuration and telemetry. This is the first industry-wide initiative driving an open, software defined, and declarative network management plane that allows programmatic operation of physical and virtual networks across the OSI stack. Presented by Anees Shaikh of Google.

