Why network automation projects stall, and the 7 fixes
Network automation projects rarely fail outright. They stall, quietly, around month six. The seven patterns behind it, how to detect each one from the platform itself, and the fix.
Read more →NetStacks Blog
Engineering notes and operations writing from the people building NetStacks: what shipped, why it works the way it does, and the network problems it was built around.
Subscribe via RSSA CI pipeline for NSO service packages, with netsim and dry-run diffs
How to put every NSO package change through git, a netsim build, a RESTCONF test, and a native dry-run diff on the merge request. GitLab CI, but the shape works anywhere.
Read more →Reconciling out-of-sync devices in NSO without breaking anything
A safe, repeatable procedure for the out-of-sync backlog on an NSO estate. check-sync, compare-config, sync-from, no-networking, and re-deploy reconcile, in the right order.
Read more →Pre and post change checks with pyATS and Forward Networks
How to make every network change prove it worked. Operational state snapshots with pyATS, intent and path verification with Forward Networks, and the exit codes that let a pipeline block a bad change.
Read more →Why NSO projects stall, and the 7 fixes
Seven patterns behind stalled Cisco NSO deployments, each with the commands that reveal it and the fix that gets services shipping again.
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The SQLite index that only failed on macOS
A startup crash that never reproduced on the machine that wrote the code. What happened, how schema files and migrations fight each other, and the small change that made the class of bug impossible.
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Why Ctrl+V opens a dialog now (and how to turn it off)
SecureCRT users asked for the paste confirmation they were used to. Here is what we built, why the chords ended up the way they did, and what the clipboard history keeps and does not keep.
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What the AI actually sees when you ask it about a router
The assistant is only as good as the context it is handed. A walk through how NetStacks assembles that context, what is redacted, what is fixed, and which prompts you can change.
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Device memory: putting incident history where someone will read it
Post-mortems are written and forgotten. Attaching the short version to the device, and showing it the moment someone connects, is the smallest change that made our own troubleshooting faster.
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Writing a MOP that can fail safely
A method of procedure is only useful if it stops when reality disagrees with the plan. What a typed step list gives you that a Word document does not, with a worked example from a transit failover.
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Bring your own model: running NetStacks against Ollama on a laptop
No account, no relay, no data leaving the building. How to point NetStacks at a local model, what works well, what does not, and how to check what the request contains.
Read more →Reading show ip bgp summary faster than the assistant does
The AI in NetStacks reads this table well, but you should read it better. A column-by-column guide to the one command every BGP engineer runs first, with the patterns that tell you what to do next.
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Telnet in 2026: console servers, lab gear, and why we kept it
Nobody should run Telnet across a network. Plenty of us still have to talk to it. How NetStacks handles Telnet, console servers and legacy SSH without making the modern path worse.
Read more →AI Isn't Going to Fix Your BGP Convergence Time — But Here's What Will
The LLM hype promises autonomous networks that self-heal. The reality is messier. What network engineers actually need isn't autonomous AI — it's an AI that thinks with you when things break.
Read more →Running Methods of Procedure in Production Without Praying: The MOP Pattern That Actually Works
Post-mortems love MOPs because they're supposed to prevent exactly the disasters that keep happening. The problem isn't the concept — it's that most MOP tooling makes them painful enough that teams skip them.
Read more →Your NetBox Isn't a Source of Truth (Yet) — Here's the Missing Piece Every Team Skips
NetBox adoption is near-universal, but most teams use it as a CMDB with a pretty UI. The gap between having NetBox and actually using it as a source of truth is smaller than you think — if you close one specific gap.
Read more →Why Your Terminal Is Your Biggest Automation Bottleneck (And Nobody Realizes It)
Teams invest in Ansible, Python, NetBox, Windmill. But the terminal — where 80% of network engineering actually happens — is still PuTTY from 2019. Here's why that matters more than you think.
Read more →The SSH CA Pattern Every Network Team Needs But Nobody Implements
Individual SSH keys are manageable. Individual SSH keys across 200 engineers, 5000 devices, and 17 automation platforms are not. SSH certificates aren't a nice-to-have anymore — they're the only way to scale access control.
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