X-CLI: CLI-based management architecture using XML

Abstract

As Internet technology becomes more complex, the policy information for managing the Internet grows beyond the capability of a simple protocol like SNMP. IETF suggested COPS (common open policy service) as an alternative, but it has not been widely accepted. For that reason, many administrators have developed network management systems which control network devices using CLI (command line interface), but systems based on CLI have a maintenance problem: when the syntax of CLI changes, the implementation of the system must be modified. We suggest X-CLI (XML wrapper API for CLI) as a solution for this problem, and describe its design principles.