Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician (CCENT) Practice Exam

Northbound interfaces describe the way a management system exposes its capabilities to external applications and users. DNA Center’s REST API and its GUI are the external points through which other tools, scripts, or administrators interact with the platform to manage and orchestrate the network. That directional role—access from outside the system to control or query it—defines them as northbound.

In contrast, southbound interfaces are used by the management system to talk down to the network devices themselves (routers, switches, wireless controllers) via protocols like NETCONF/RESTCONF, SNMP, etc. RESTful services describe the API style, but the term that captures their role in the architecture is northbound. So the REST API and GUI for external interaction are northbound APIs.