1. Approach

This article adopts an example-based approach to illustrate the various facets of automation. This article is not intended to be exhaustive. Rather, it aims to show how automation can be thought through and integrated into the design of protocols and architectures.

This article focuses in particular on the network segments often involved in the provision of services:

1. WAN (Wide Area Network) segment. This segment concerns the connection of customer sites to an operator's network(s). This segment is critical because it relies (generally) on a single...