Notch

Notch is a cool web service and Python client library that makes managing your network gear—like switches and routers—super easy. With Notch, you can create powerful apps that automate network management. It works with any device that has a command-line interface and gives you a consistent API to access different vendors.

Easy Multi-Vendor Support

One of the best things about Notch is its support for command-line interfaces from top network equipment vendors. This means you can build apps that work with multiple brands right out of the box! Anything you can do in the vendor CLI, you can do using Notch.

What Can You Build?

You might be wondering what kind of applications you can create with Notch. Here are some examples:

• Automated network provisioning


• Live network state audit


• N-way command-line interface (like Mr. CLI)


• RANCID-style network configuration backups (check out some cool tools that work well with Notch).

This lets developers treat network device command-line interfaces like a request-response system, making automation way easier.

A Bit of History

Notch takes inspiration from the RANCID project but isn’t bound by its code. You can run it as a Python WSGI web app or as a standalone Tornado app. Plus, it provides an HTTP/JSON-RPC v2 interface, which helps distribute tasks across your network efficiently, improving performance and cutting down on latency in larger setups.

Execute Commands Easily

With either a local or remote Notch Agent, executing commands on routers is straightforward. For example:

mrcli localhost:8080 --target "^[abc]r.*" --cmd "show ip ospf nei | i [0-9]+"

  br1.mel:

  10.100.0.2 0 FULL/ - 00:00:32 192.168.0.4 GigabitEthernet1/0

  ar1.mel:

  10.100.0.1 0 FULL/ - 00:00:37 192.168.0.0 GigabitEthernet1/0

Installing Notch

If you’re ready to get started, just use easy_install or pip install to grab the Notch package from the Python Package Index:

easy_install -U notch

A few other packages are needed for Notch (like Tornado), so you’ll have to install those manually too! Check out the installation documentation here!