Computer Engineering Commons^™

Leveraging Ansible To Locate Network Devices, Elijah Hadden

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This report demonstrates the collection of Layer 2 and Layer 3 network device information using Ansible and explains the limitations identified performing such a procedure. Maintaining dynamic documentation of network information using automation would benefit network security with improvements to attack surface visibility and cyberattack incident response time. After the procedure was conducted, it was determined that Ansible alone is incapable of producing the intended information base due to the way it handles numerical variables. This report identifies limitations in Ansible’s ability to manipulate large quantities of network information and necessitates further discussion regarding what Ansible can and should be …