Implementing and Operating Cisco Enterprise Network Core Technologies (ENCOR) v1.2AutomationHard

A development team is working on a new application that requires high-performance, bidirectional streaming communication with network devices. The application needs to interact with devices using a modern RPC (Remote Procedure Call) framework that is language-agnostic and uses efficient serialization mechanisms. Which protocol is most suitable for this requirement?

  1. ARESTCONF
  2. BTelnet
  3. CgRPC
  4. DSOAP
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C. gRPC

gRPC (gRPC Remote Procedure Calls) is a modern, open-source RPC framework developed by Google. It uses Protocol Buffers for efficient data serialization and HTTP/2 for transport, enabling high-performance, bidirectional streaming, and is language-agnostic, making it ideal for the described requirements.

Why the other options are wrong

  • A. RESTCONF is an HTTP/1.1-based RESTful protocol, primarily for CRUD operations on YANG data, not optimized for high-performance bidirectional streaming.
  • B. Telnet is an insecure, unencrypted protocol for command-line access, completely unsuitable for modern, secure, high-performance API communication.
  • D. SOAP is an older, XML-based messaging protocol, known for being more heavyweight and less performant for modern streaming applications.

gRPC for Network Automation

A modern, open-source RPC framework that uses Protocol Buffers for efficient data serialization and HTTP/2 for transport, enabling high-performance, bidirectional streaming, and language-agnostic communication.

  • Uses Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) for efficient serialization.
  • Based on HTTP/2 for transport, enabling multiplexing and streaming.
  • Supports bidirectional streaming RPCs.
  • Language-agnostic with code generation for multiple languages.
  • Often used for telemetry and microservices communication.

Memory trick: gRPC is the fast lane, streaming data like a river with efficient packaging.

More Automation questions