X-CLI: CLI-based Management Architecture using XML

As Internet technology becomes more complex, the policy information for managing the Internet grows beyond the capability of a simple protocol like SNMP. IETF suggested COPS as an alternative, but it has not been widely accepted. For that reason, many administrators have developed network management systems which control network devices using CLI, but systems based on CLI have a maintenance problem: when the syntax of CLI changes, the implementation of the system must be modified. In this paper, we suggest X-CLI as a solution for this problem, and describe its design principles.