Welcome to the UNIS documentation!¶
The recent advancement in Software Defined Networks (SDNs) has increased the need for a centric view of the network that reflects the actual topology of the network and provide different real-time and historical data about network resources. A number of data models for networks have been proposed, e.g., NMWG, NDL, and the developing NML. However, all these models focused in how to model a network and left many open questions that make these models less optimal for use in an SDN world. One of the biggest limitations of these models that they don’t define a well defined API, at best API guidelines are defined to interact with these models.
Currently networks are viewed from different perspectives; design, configuration and management, monitoring, and analysis. Each view of the network is using one or more models to represent the network. For example, NETCONF uses YANG for network configuration and management while perfSONAR uses NMWG for network monitoring. Generally, network models are designed and optimized with unique properties and level of abstraction to serve a certain view of the network. However, using different inconsistent models for each views often leads to inconsistent views of the same network.
The Unified Network Information Service (UNIS), with its eponymous schema, is an effort to develop a unifying network data model along with a well-defined RESTful API. UNIS falls within the Periscope framework, which includes a measurement store (MS) and the BLiPP_ measurement agent.
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