Network Automation Newsletter #062 - January 2026

Welcome to the January 2026 edition of the Packet Coders: Network Automation Newsletter!

Let’s dive in... 🚀

Packet Coders Updates ✨

Here are the latest updates and additions to our Packet Coders training library:

• Modern Network Telemetry - Fully Live
  The telemetry course is now fully live and covers Telegraf and gNMIc for telemetry collection, Prometheus TSDB for data storage, and Grafana for visualization.
  ➜ View Course

• An Introduction to NetBox Plugin Development
  Covers an introduction to NetBox plugins and how to build a configuration drift plugin from scratch.
  ➜ View Library

• How to Automate Jinja Templates with AI
  Explores how to automate the creation of Jinja templates using AI, including configuration anonymization and designing templates to support NetBox on-box rendering.
  ➜ View Library

Community Content 🤝

➜ How to Get Structured Responses back from OpenAI: Provides a quick overview on how to use the response_format parameter to control the structure of the OpenAI response.

➜ NetBox best practices for AI coding agents: Guidance for building production-ready AI agent integrations with NetBox covering REST, GraphQL, auth, performance, and data modeling.

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Streamline Your Network Operations with SuzieQ

Build smarter workflows with deep data and always-on analysis.
No code required.

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Learn More ➜

AI 🤖

➜ RAG and AI lecture resources: Lecture slides and videos explaining Retrieval-Augmented Generation, database-to-LLM pipelines, and why RAG matters.
➜ cml-mcp: Model Context Protocol server enabling AI assistants to interact with Cisco Modeling Labs using natural language for lab creation, control, and automation.

Sponsored⚡

Advance Your Network Automation with Netpicker

Config backup, security/compliance testing and job automation in one platform.

(Sponsored ad)

Learn More ➜

Open-source Projects + Releases 🛠️

➜ OpenTelemetry Collector playground: Web-based playground for pasting OpenTelemetry Collector YAML, visualizing pipelines, and validating configs in real time.
➜ Nautobot AI Ops plugin v1.0.6: Update announcing compatibility with Nautobot 3.0.0, Jinja2 dynamic prompt rendering, UI-based Markdown prompts for agent tuning, and a roadmap for dynamic tool integration.
➜ Netpicker 2.6.2 release: Release improving policy and rule testing performance (up to 7x faster), adding command backup overview, bulk edits, CSV/Excel export, Jinja2 highlighting, and introducing the Netpicker CLI.

Events 🎟️

➜ Powering the Digital Grid with Network Automation & AI-Driven Operations – DISTRIBUTECH 2026 – San Diego, California, USA – 2 Feb 2026.
➜ Software & Standards for Smart Networks & Services 2026 (SNS4SNS) – Sophia-Antipolis, France – 2–5 Feb 2026; topics include network automation, orchestration and AI.
➜ APRICOT 2026 – Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies – Jakarta, Indonesia – 4–12 Feb 2026 (conference sessions 9–11 Feb).
➜ SASE & ZTNA Forum 2026 – Palais des Congrès de Paris, France – 24 Mar 2026.
➜ FutureNet World 2026 – Network Automation & AI Event – Intercontinental O2, London, UK – 21–22 Apr 2026.

Everything Else 🌀

➜ lance0/ttl: Modern traceroute and network diagnostic tool with real-time TUI, per-hop stats, ASN/geo lookup, ECMP detection, MTU discovery, NAT detection, and scriptable output.

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Team Packet Coders