Nokia Network Coding and Testing – Demo of What We Do Everyday

Aakash Kumar and Ahmed Abutaleb of Nokia demonstrate the everyday change workflow Nokia IT uses for its data center fabrics. Working through Cursor in natural language, they show documentation generated from code, a GitLab branch tied to a change number, an on-demand digital twin in EDA, automated traffic testing, and an auto-generated merge request, before tearing the twin back down. The session, part of Nokia’s appearance at Networking Field Day 41, paired a recorded demo from Kumar with live narration from Abutaleb.

In a lab with two interconnected leaf, spine, and superspine data centers, Kumar showed that every element of the fabric lives as code in GitLab, with one repository per fabric and a single topology YAML file that doubles as live documentation. Cursor reads that definition to draw diagrams on demand and flag gaps, guided by a rules file Abutaleb built by correcting the agent over time, plus EDA and SR Linux guides. To add a server, the engineer creates a branch tied to a change number, and the agent drives GitLab pipelines that populate an empty digital twin as an exact copy of the lab. Cursor produces a plan for review, edits the YAML on approval, interprets the EDA dry-run transaction, and runs east-west and north-south tests, documenting one expected failure in a merge request before the twin is torn down within minutes.

Addressing concerns that the workflow is developer-centric, Abutaleb noted that only Kumar has a software background, and Andy Lapteff said the natural language interface had dissolved his own objections. Abutaleb added that the pipelines the team built are now in the product, that tests are standard one-line commands the team defines, and that routine additions use a production dry run rather than the twin, which is reserved for topology changes or unfamiliar devices. Firmware upgrades remain a separate operation. Next steps include read-only access so Cursor can pull live state, integration with IPAM, NetBox, and ServiceNow so VLANs and subnets are allocated automatically from service requests, and upgrading switch software by gradually draining traffic so services stay up, part of the team’s goal of running its data centers with the ease of a private cloud.