gRPC Conf 2019

For decades, network operators running large global backbones or small enterprise campuses were encumbered by monitoring and management systems based on legacy, inefficient protocols that limit data utility, or proprietary implementations that add further complexity to already heterogeneous environments.

Motivated by these limitations, the networking industry set out to reimagine what a modern network management system could look like, by developing a set of software systems to manage network devices in a vendor-neutral, scalable, and secure way based on gRPC. In this talk, we will describe a comprehensive ecosystem of open tools and services for network management, covering configuration, forwarding, and operational management, network telemetry, and network testing. With growing adoption by network operators and vendors, all of these tools leverage gRPC as their underlying substrate, and demonstrate its versatility and applicability to infrastructure management.