Adrian Lita
Legacy Equipment Retrofit
Key Highlights
- SNMP-to-NETCONF
- TELNET-to-NETCONF
- Protocol bridges
Overview
Protocol adaptation layer enabling modern NETCONF/YANG management of legacy network equipment that only supports SNMP or TELNET-based CLI management. The system acts as a transparent bridge, translating between modern standardized interfaces and legacy proprietary protocols, allowing telecommunications companies to upgrade their network management systems without replacing functioning hardware.
Technical Details
SNMP-to-NETCONF adapter maps SNMP MIBs to YANG models, handles GET/SET operations, and implements SNMP trap to NETCONF notification conversion. Uses PySNMP library with custom MIB compilation. TELNET-to-NETCONF adapter implements CLI command generation from YANG data models, screen-scraping with regex-based parsing, state machine for CLI navigation, and error detection from unstructured text responses. Both adapters provide full NETCONF server interface with transaction support (using rollback checkpoints on devices that support it). Deployment using Docker containers for isolation and scalability. Management web interface for adapter configuration and monitoring.
Challenges Overcome
- • Semantic gap between SNMP/CLI and YANG data models (some concepts don't map cleanly)
- • Implementing transactions (commit/rollback) over protocols that don't support them
- • CLI parsing across different device firmware versions with varying output formats
- • Performance optimization (adapters add latency to management operations)
- • Handling edge cases and error conditions in legacy equipment
- • Maintaining connection pools and session state for multiple concurrent operations
- • Security implications of storing credentials and handling sensitive data
Outcomes & Impact
- ✓ Enabled $50M+ savings by avoiding premature equipment replacement
- ✓ Deployed in production managing 10,000+ legacy devices
- ✓ Reduced network management tool migration time from years to months
- ✓ Allowed gradual modernization without forklift upgrades
- ✓ Improved network operational efficiency through standardized management
- ✓ Created reusable framework adaptable to various equipment types
