Network configurations follow a loose set of rules which are difficult to parse without leveraging a context free grammar such as BNF.
##Modeling a configuration.
A network configuration is complicated because it follows an informal structure for defining the configuration properties. Some elements naturally fall into a key/value such as hostname router-1, while others are more complicated such as router configuration stanzas
router bgp 65525
no synchronization
bgp router-id 192.0.0.1
bgp always-compare-med
bgp deterministic-med
bgp bestpath compare-routerid
bgp bestpath as-path confed
bgp confederation identifier 100
bgp confederation peers 65527 65528 65529 65530```
There is an evident hierarchy with keys in first position such as:
hostname interface router ip route-map
Entities
First Order
hostname - interface - router - - ip route-map
Second order (<- parent)
ip <- interface prefix-list
Third order
prefix-list
Fourth order
<- prefix-list