Exam topic 6.5 asks you to describe the characteristics of REST-based APIs: HTTP verbs, authentication, data encoding, response codes. You could memorize those from a table, or you could spend twenty minutes actually doing them: getting a 401, trading credentials for a bearer token, and pulling live JSON out of a real controller. This lab does the second one, and the controller is software you already run: your own Cisco Modeling Labs server. Part of the PingLabz CCNA Automation Labs; every request and response below is captured live.
One honest platform note up front: the IOL images in this topology do not support RESTCONF or NETCONF (restconf is not a recognized command on iol-xe; both interfaces require the YANG infrastructure found on platforms like the Catalyst 8000V, which does not fit CML Free's node budget). So instead of pretending, we practice REST where every CML Free user genuinely has it: the CML controller's own API, which is a textbook REST implementation. The RESTCONF section at the end shows the IOS XE syntax you should recognize for the exam, clearly labeled as reference rather than captured from this lab.
What you will learn
- The REST request anatomy: verb + URL + headers + body, and what each part did in every call you make here.
- Token-based authentication: why APIs hand you a bearer token instead of asking for your password on every call.
- How to read response codes (200, 401) as protocol-level truth, not error noise.
- Where RESTCONF fits on IOS XE, and the config syntax to recognize on the exam.
