# What is Network Automation?

> Network automation uses software to perform repeatable network lifecycle tasks from machine-readable inputs.

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- Language: en
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## Content

It can provision services, deploy configuration, validate intended state, collect operational data, detect deviations, and trigger remediation. The goal is controlled, consistent execution at a speed and scale that manual device-by-device work cannot reliably provide.

Automation commonly combines an authoritative inventory, configuration templates or data models, version-controlled policy, device and controller interfaces, validation tests, telemetry, and an orchestration workflow. More mature systems compare desired and observed state or use feedback to initiate changes. That feedback loop does not make a system autonomous: human approval, bounded permissions, staged deployment, rollback, and exception handling may still be essential.

### Key points

- **Provisioning:** Automate new sites and services, address and virtual local area network (VLAN) allocation, access-control changes, certificate rotation, and software upgrades.
- **Assurance:** Validate configuration before and after deployment, compare intended with observed state, collect evidence, and respond to defined faults.
- **Interfaces:** Model-driven interfaces such as YANG can improve consistency and validation across systems that correctly implement the relevant models.
- **Important limitation:** Automation amplifies both correct and incorrect instructions. Bad source data, unsafe templates, excessive credentials, incomplete testing, application programming interface (API) changes, or compromised orchestration can affect many devices quickly; backups alone do not ensure that a failed change can be safely reversed.

### Related terms

[Software-defined networking (SDN)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/software-defined-networking/>) · [Network monitoring](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/network-monitoring/>) · [Infrastructure as code (IaC) security](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/infrastructure-as-code-security/>) · [Security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/security-orchestration-automation-and-response/>) · [Network as a service (NaaS)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/network-as-a-service/>)

### Sources

[IETF RFC 8969 (Informational): A Framework for Automating Service and Network Management with YANG](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8969) · [NIST SP 800-215: Guide to a Secure Enterprise Network Landscape](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/215/final)

## Attribution and scope

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