Performance analysis of network automation techniques for dense IP networks

Network automation is an emerging technology which gained a lot of traction over the past few years. NA can be used at multiple levels, such as topology creation, configuration generation, and testing. It can save a great amount of time and effort compared to conventional ways. Here, the automated topology creation tools EVE-NG, Pllama, and Container LAB are evaluated. For configuration generation, Nokia’s Komodo was tested and compared with an automated configuration using python and manually using an Excel sheet. Finally, various test cases were executed in CLASSIC-CLI, MD-CLI, and NETCONF to evaluate the automation performance on the testing level. The results showed that automation greatly reduces the time spent in all the stages of the network deployment mentioned above. In addition, automated topology creation is shown to be 4.5 times faster than in the manual case, configuration generation is about 10% better than the manual case, and test execution time is 11 times faster than manual testing.