Unicon is a package aiming to provide a unified connection experience to network devices through typical command-line management interface. By wrapping the underlying session (eg, telnet, ssh), Unicon provides:

• direct and proxied connections through any common CLI interface (telnet, ssh, serial etc)
• power of expect-like programming without having to deal with low-level logic
• multi-vendor support through an agnostic API interface
• seamless handling of CLI modes (eg, enable, configure, admin-configure mode)
• rejected commands, command error detections
• value-add statful services (specific to the platform)

and is extensible: platform supports and services are implemented via open-source plugins.

Unicon is the standard, go-to CLI connection implementation for Cisco pyATS framework.

This package was initially developed internally in Cisco, and is now release to the general public starting late 2017 through Cisco DevNet.

To start developing plugins for Unicon, clone this repository into your pyATS virtual environment, and run make develop:

bash$ cd ~/pyats
bash$ git clone https://github.com/CiscoTestAutomation/unicon.plugins
bash$ cd unicon.plugins
bash$ make develop

See https://developer.cisco.com/docs/pyats/#!license-support page for details.