Apart from IP multicast and QoS, netlab can configure commonly used networking technologies across dozens of devices from most networking vendors. Why don’t you use all that embedded knowledge (supported by hundreds of integration tests) to help you configure unfamiliar devices?

You don’t have to install VM or container managers (Vagrant/containerlab), or beg vendors to give you access to device VMs/containers, to get working device configurations. All you need is a Python package that works on Windows¹, macOS, or Linux.

It’s as simple as this:

• Install networklab Python package. As we’re dealing with a one-off test, use a virtual environment:

$ python3 -m venv nlt
$ source ./nlt/bin/activate
$ pip3 install networklab

$ curl -LsSf uvx.sh/networklab/install.sh | sh

• Even better, open the netlab-examples repository as a GitHub Codespace.

• Find the most appropriate lab topology in netlab examples, integration tests, BGP labs, IS-IS labs, or EVPN/VXLAN labs². You could also try to cajole your AI buddy into creating a working netlab topology³.

• Copy the topology URL

• Find the netlab device name in the supported platforms table

• Download the topology and create all the configuration files with netlab create -d device -o config url. If you want to use a device that’s only available as a container (Cisco IOL, SR Linux), add -p clab option.

  For example, use the following command to create EVPN/VXLAN bridging configuration for a Cisco IOS/XE router (IOL):

$ netlab create -d iol -p clab -o config https://github.com/bgplab/evpn/blob/main/evpn/1-bridging/solution.yml

• Explore the node_files directory. It has a separate subdirectory for each node in the lab topology; each subdirectory contains a file for every configuration module (technology) used on the node. For example, these are the files we’d get for the S1 switch running Cisco IOL:

$ ls node_files/s1
bgp     evpn    ifstate initial ospf    vlan    vxlan

Here’s a sample Cisco IOL VLAN and VXLAN configuration:

!
bridge-domain 100
 member Ethernet0/2 service-instance 100
!
interface Ethernet0/2
 service instance 100 ethernet
  encapsulation untagged

interface nve1
 no shutdown
 source-interface Loopback0
 host-reachability protocol bgp
 member vni 100100 ingress-replication

And here’s the EVPN part (it has an extra route-map that is used only on EBGP sessions):

! 
bridge-domain 100
 member evpn-instance 100 vni 100100
!
l2vpn evpn instance 100 vlan-based
 encapsulation vxlan
 replication-type ingress
 rd 10.0.0.1:100
 route-target import 65000:100
 route-target export 65000:100
!
route-map evpn_nh_unchanged permit 10
 set ip next-hop unchanged
!
router bgp 65000
 address-family l2vpn evpn
  neighbor 10.0.0.2 activate
  neighbor 10.0.0.2 send-community both

Obviously, you could also ask your favorite AI buddy to create the device configs directly ;)