General Industry question

Robbo777

Hi, so this is just a general industry work place related question. I was wondering through a number of different people, what is the most used form of practice in the work place, meaning are the command lines on the routers, switches used more often than say a piece of software with a gui that performs the same kind of tasks, or is it pretty much 50/50?

Thanks

OctalDump

My experience is command line is much more used. To be honest, when I was configuring Cisco gear semi-regularly, I never used the GUI. It's much easier to cut and paste bits of config and to deal with troubleshoot commands and outputs from the command line.

Robbo777

OctalDump wrote: »

My experience is command line is much more used. To be honest, when I was configuring Cisco gear semi-regularly, I never used the GUI. It's much easier to cut and paste bits of config and to deal with troubleshoot commands and outputs from the command line.

Yeah i would've guessed the CLI, it makes more sense and is easier as well in most situations in my opinion. But for things that are very complex such as setting up VPN's and asa firewalls, these require such a large amount of commands, with these 2 are they still produced from the command line or do they use some kind of GUY like Cisco Configuration Professional?

Simrid

I have always used the CLI, i've never once even seen the router GUI (woops).

We use ASA firewalls and a lot of people choose to use the GUI for it, however I personally prefer the CLI and is makes more sense when configuring. ASA firewall's are very complex but being able to easily see configured object-groups and ACL's, the CLI wins all the time imo

pinkiaiii

being new to networking GUI is the part i miss-since before knowing any real CLI usage,you just pop into router couple clicks and your done-but thats at home.

Where in real world i imagine one has to be on par to work easily with CLI and any issues commands just be there in your head,thus if any troubleshooting or errors occur you can almost instantly use your knowledge and troubleshoot just firing right commands.Thus no matter what OS or applications are on top you only need that single screen line to get into action.

But with that said even cisco is coming out with latest not sure is it catalyst or some other type R&S boxes for large corporations that incorporate GUI almost to extent where its self configured-gives you layouts,auto configuration sensing,even network maps in graphical view,so while cli is to remain,technologies are moving towards simplifying it all,maybe not for next 5y but its coming where GUI will be 50/50 on par with cli if not more.

pinkiaiii

sorry for double posting cant see the edit button,but just remembered just two weeks ago doing lab in pairs,and got stuck with configuration thus not being able to connect to another host,after twisting heads for hour redoing stuff,asked for help - lecturer holding highest cc architect level degree,comes over starts firing commands in seconds,first thing notices that ping replies with 169 ip,thus someone before hand was doing class and Windows assigned default gateway,then still no ping going trough,checking ip route seems fine,fires commands to see interface ips,sees that i messed up entering given ip on the lab on one of the interfaces.Now this might sound easy for someone already working with switches or having above ccna degree,but seeing person operate in such speed and noticing details,putting in commands in seconds is just mind blowing experience that you feel how the hell does one get up to such level to operate cli like spreading butter over bread.

Simrid

It's all about practise and experience. If you are working on something day in, day out you will pick up on how it is done.

For example, before my current work place I had no ASA experience what so ever. Within a month I feel comfortable using the CLI and I don't have to put much thought into it. When you have the experience and you're comfortable in the enviroments that you work within, you get to learn what aspects of the network can cause issues and how to troubleshoot them.

Within a lab enviroment aswell it can be a lot more straightforward. For example, if your task was to assign some interfaces IP's and no shutdown them - The chances are that is what's going to be the issue, this can be double checked by a sh ip interface brief command and away you go.

TWX

Simple networks are probably going to be entirely command-line. There is a point when GUI becomes a component, but it's because you're configuring controlling equipment that then turns around and manages other devices. The GUIs are not terribly good either, so you still need to have that inherent knowledge of the command line works before using the GUI will do you any good.

I work on a very, very large but simple network. I spend the bulk of my time in SSH.

networker050184

It's currently mostly CLI in the industry still, but more and more things are moving to controller based "overlay" type products on the cutting edge. Cisco ACI, Juniper Contrail, etc. As things move towards as much automation as possible people are kept out of the CLI. We have GUI tools for a lot of functions now for the support staff. Tools to deploy VLANs, set access port membership, generate/push customer configs etc. I'd love if no one ever had to touch the CLI on my network again. Except for me of course, I love the CLI!