On 24–25 February, NREN software developers and network engineers gathered at SUNET in Stockholm to take the next steps in the development of Clixon.
Clixon is a community-driven initiative to build a vendor-agnostic orchestration controller based on open standards such as YANG. As networks grow in complexity, with increasing expectations for responsiveness and resilience, the need for collaborative, open solutions is growing. Over two intensive days, participants shared operational experience, gave input to development priorities, and defined concrete objectives for the next phase of the project.
The workshop was deliberately hands-on. Rather than a conference-style event, the aim was to create space to discuss real deployments and operational challenges. New users worked directly with service deployment and custom commands. Participants spent time doing a deep dive into the Clixon architecture and how different types of transactions work.
Discussions also covered future services users would love to see, such as a service for managing SRX firewalls. An early proof of concept demonstrated how a large language model (LLM) could be connected to Clixon via an MCP server speaking RESTCONF. Being in the same room as the users and seeing how they interact with Clixon has helped developers identify potential interaction improvements.
“Cixon is built by operators for operators, and what makes it powerful is the open source community behind it. The workshop showed that there is real momentum and plenty of room for others to join.”
says Markus Krogh, Service Orchestration and Engineering Manager at NORDUnet.
The ambition is clear: to grow the community while maintaining the pragmatic, engineering-driven spirit that defines the project. If you are interested in model-driven configuration management and automation, open standards, and shaping the tools you use, this is the moment to get involved
👉 Learn more about Clixon and how to get involved here: https://nordu.net/clixon/
About Clixon
Clixon is an open source, YANG-based configuration and automation framework supporting CLI, NETCONF, and RESTCONF.
The Clixon Controller extends this approach to multi-device automation.
Read more:
Project homepage: https://www.clicon.org
Documentation: https://clixon-docs.readthedocs.io
