SwiNOG#41 | Vendor-Agnostic E2E Testing Ecosystem with Netlab | Lerena & Griesbeck | Zebbra AG
SwiNOG#41 | Building a Vendor-Agnostic E2E Testing Ecosystem with Netlab | Leandro Lerena & Andy Griesbeck | Zebbra AG
Abstract: Network automation has a habit of failing in surprising ways the moment it hits production. Inspired by the netlab presentation at SwiNOG 40, we finally realized that integrating on-demand virtual topologies into daily development was achievable in the near term. In this talk, we share how we built a comprehensive End-to-End automation testing ecosystem bridging code authoring and safe deployment. We'll show how we moved from monolithic scripts to reusable building blocks with a vendor-agnostic device interface, allowing engineers to write automation logic once and run it across platforms.
The main focus is our automated validation pipeline: a custom FastAPI-driven Remote Lab service leveraging netlab and Containerlab to provision topologies on the fly. We'll demonstrate how engineers can test their automation against virtual devices (like FRR and Cisco IOL) with just one line of code—guaranteeing changes are proven safe before touching production.
Event: SwiNOG #41 - http://www.swinog.ch
Day: 28.04.2026
Location: Bern, Gurten (https://www.gurtenpark.ch/)
Slides: https://www.swinog.ch/meetings/swinog41/
Swiss Network Operators Group The Swiss Network Operators Group (SwiNOG) is an informal group of people who are concerned with engineering and operation of the Swiss Internet. SwiNOG (Swiss Network Operators Group) is a community for (not only) Swiss service providers and IT specialists since 24th of february 2000. SwiNOG is analogue to NANOG und DENOG. SwiNOG was founded as the very first European NOG. SwiNOG exists to enhance the quality of Internet services available in Switzerland. It does this by fostering the free exchange of technical ideas and information between different companies and organisations.
For more details please see: https://www.swinog.ch | / 123285