Performance Analysis on Network Automation Interaction with Network Devices Using Python

Recent research has shown that 95% of network tasks are monitored manually. This has consumed a lot of money and time. Many workers need to be employed for the same tasks in network deployment. This analysis aims to identify the best method that can improve the efficiency of scripting in configuring network devices and to find the differences in performance in the time needed to configure network devices between manual method and automation. Network topology was designed that contains 36 Cisco devices with different IOS versions. The topology was designed precisely to implement automation in a practical way that can reduce the time needed for configuration with no errors. Based on data analysis from the emulator that mimics a realistic network environment, it is identified that automation is a superior method in configuring Cisco devices because automation can save up to 99% of the time needed. The performance presents the automation method required only 120 seconds to configure all Cisco devices compared to the manual method that required 5797 seconds. Besides, zero errors were reported in automation, while 2 errors were identified in the manual method. This research is significant and practical in helping the network administrators to handle network configurations and automation in deployments of the network systems in an organization.