ISP & service provider network lab
Describe a multi-vendor MPLS, BGP, EVPN, or Segment Routing topology in plain English and AI deploys a real-CLI carrier lab in about two minutes.
Trusted by network engineers worldwide
What makes NetPilot different
Cloud-native + AI-designed in one product — describe a multi-vendor carrier topology in plain English and reproduce a cross-vendor protocol bug in ~2 minutes instead of sourcing chassis and racking gear. Four capabilities Tier-1 carrier and ISP NetOps teams compound when shipped together.
Cloud-native
Browser only. Nothing to install.
The alternative
Chassis-based testers (Keysight IxNetwork / VIAVI TestCenter) need racked hardware and a quote cycle; DIY ContainerLab needs a 16–32 GB Ubuntu host you build and maintain.
AI-designed
Describe any topology in plain English — AI designs, configures, and deploys it; SSH in to verify.
The alternative
Hand-author per-vendor MPLS/SR/BGP configs (Cisco segment-routing mpls, Junos source-packet-routing, Nokia sr mpls) node by node before you can test anything.
Multi-turn iteration
“Add an Arista spine, move OSPF to area 0.0.0.1” → AI updates across all devices.
The alternative
“Raise loss to 20%, flap the iBGP session, add an SR-TE policy” means re-editing and re-pushing configs by hand on every PE and P router.
2 minutes vs days/weeks
~2 minutes from prompt to working multi-vendor lab.
The alternative
4–6 weeks of hardware sourcing, firmware matching, and rack time just to reproduce a single cross-vendor carrier bug.
See It in Action
Watch NetPilot build a 5-node FRR mesh, deploy it to the cloud, inject random link loss, and run an end-to-end latency and packet loss test — all from one plain-English prompt. The same pattern reproduces carrier-grade outage scenarios in minutes.
From prompt to a running multi-vendor carrier lab
Describe or import the topology, let the AI design and deploy it in the cloud, then SSH into real vendor CLIs to verify protocol state. The prompt and generated configs become the reproducible artifact for the post-mortem.
Describe or import
State the topology, protocols, and failure conditions in plain English — or import production configs to rebuild a digital twin of the backbone segment that broke.
AI designs & deploys
The agent designs the topology, generates per-vendor configs (Cisco, Juniper, Nokia, Arista, FRR), and deploys a cloud lab in ~2 minutes — Nokia SR Linux and FRR built in; Cisco, Juniper, and Arista via BYOI. Iterate by chat — "raise loss to 20%, flap the iBGP session" — across every node.
SSH to real CLIs
Dual-path: drive it with the AI agent, or SSH straight into real network-OS CLIs — SR Linux built in, Junos and IOS-XR via BYOI — to inspect MPLS label stacks, capture traces, and script Scapy / tc netem impairments yourself.
What you can build and model
Multi-vendor protocol coverage at the carrier control-plane layer — ISP backbones, MPLS, Segment Routing, BGP, EVPN, and IS-IS behavior NetPilot reproduces on real vendor CLIs in the cloud. For 100G+ line-rate certification, pair with chassis-based testers.
ISP & service-provider backbone
Model a multi-vendor carrier core — PE/P/RR roles, iBGP full mesh or route reflectors, and a provider-edge VRF design.
MPLS L3VPN & L2VPN
LDP and RSVP-TE label distribution, VPNv4 route reflectors, PE-CE routing, VPLS, and EVPN-VPWS over a carrier core.
Segment Routing (SR-MPLS / SRv6)
SR-TE policies, TI-LFA fast-reroute, BGP-LU, SRv6 uSID and L3VPN-over-SRv6 on real network-OS CLIs — Nokia SR Linux built in; Cisco and Juniper via BYOI.
BGP at carrier scale
eBGP/iBGP, MP-BGP, BGP-LS, BGP PIC, RPKI validation, and flowspec — convergence studies and policy regression on real NOS.
EVPN multi-vendor interop
Type-2/3/5 routes, symmetric/asymmetric IRB, route-target handling, and the Cisco–Juniper EVPN gotchas that bite in production.
Cross-vendor bug reproduction
Rebuild the exact failing topology and inject a malformed BGP UPDATE or EVPN route with Scapy to reproduce a carrier outage.
IS-IS, OSPF & multicast
Multi-level IS-IS with wide metrics, multi-area OSPF, PIM ASM/SSM, and multicast over MPLS across vendors.
Pre-purchase vendor validation
Stand up the candidate topology — Nokia SR Linux built in, Cisco / Juniper / Arista via BYOI — and compare convergence and interop before the RFP closes.
Carrier lab tools compared
Honest positioning. NetPilot is not a replacement for 100G+ line-rate line-card certification — that's Keysight's lane. NetPilot is a replacement for the 6-week hardware-lab-request process when you need to reproduce a specific protocol bug.
Reproduce the Tier-1 carrier-style EVPN bug in 10 minutes
The pattern shows up across carrier outages: an end-of-life vendor edge device sends a malformed EVPN or BGP UPDATE to a core router in a different vendor. The core router crashes. Traffic loss cascades. By the time the post-mortem starts, the team is facing 4–6 weeks of hardware sourcing, firmware matching, and topology replication just to reproduce the failure.
Most of that time is environment setup — not investigation.
With NetPilot the shape of the workflow changes. Describe the lab in plain English: "Cisco IOL router and Juniper cRPD in EVPN peering over VXLAN. Linux endpoint with Scapy connected to the Cisco side. AS 65001 and 65002. Advertise 10.100.0.0/24 from both sides." NetPilot generates per-vendor configs, deploys real Cisco IOS and Junos CLIs (Cisco IOL and Juniper cRPD via BYOI; the Linux endpoint built in) on cloud-hosted ContainerLab in ~2 minutes, and wires the Linux endpoint with Scapy preinstalled.
A concrete, publicly documented anchor: CVE-2025-21602 — a Juniper Junos BGP UPDATE processing crash with a published Scapy proof-of-concept. The same repro pattern applies: stand up a cRPD + BGP peer + Linux-with-Scapy lab, run the public POC, observe the crash reproducibly, iterate on mitigations. A workflow that used to require weeks of hardware fits into a coffee break.
Alternative to Keysight IxNetwork for operator-side bug reproduction
Where Keysight wins
- • 100G+ / 400G+ line-rate certification
- • Chassis-based performance validation
- • Tier-1 procurement-driven pre-deployment sign-off
- • 3GPP / 5G / cellular compliance testing
Where NetPilot wins
- • On-demand bug reproduction
- • Cloud self-serve, no chassis, no quote cycle
- • AI prompt → multi-vendor lab in minutes
- • Reproducible malformed packet injection (Scapy) and failure conditions (tc netem)
Use NetPilot when your engineer needs to reproduce a specific customer-reported protocol bug at 2am — not when you need to certify a line card for a 3-month RFP. The two tools complement each other.
The same positioning applies to VIAVI TestCenter (formerly Spirent TestCenter — the TestCenter product line was carved out to VIAVI during the 2024–2025 Spirent acquisition process). Chassis-based, six-figure, procurement-gated — the right tool for line-rate performance, not for on-demand multi-vendor bug repro.
Use cases for Tier-1 carriers and ISPs
Five carrier workflows NetPilot compresses from weeks to minutes.
Cross-vendor bug reproduction
An end-of-life vendor edge device sends a malformed EVPN or BGP UPDATE to a core router in a different vendor, and traffic drops. Traditional post-mortems sit behind 4–6 weeks of hardware sourcing. NetPilot rebuilds the exact topology — Cisco IOL, Juniper cRPD, Arista cEOS (BYOI), plus built-in Nokia SR Linux — in ~2 minutes from a plain-English prompt.
Anchor scenario: the 10-minute repro →Outage forensics
Linux endpoint + Scapy for malformed packet crafting. tc netem for packet loss, jitter, link flap, reordering. Every lab is isolated and reproducible, so you can replay the exact failure conditions, iterate on fixes, and capture the full timeline for the post-mortem report.
Outage forensics playbook →Pre-purchase vendor validation
Stand up the actual candidate topology — Nokia SR Linux built in, Cisco / Juniper / Arista via BYOI — in your target configuration before the RFP closes. Validate feature compatibility, compare convergence behavior, test interop against your existing backbone. No gear shipped. No quote cycle.
Protocol research
Real device CLIs for EVPN, SR-MPLS, SRv6, BGP-LU, MPLS L3VPN, IS-IS, OSPF, and PIM. Not Batfish-style static analysis — actual Nokia SR Linux behavior built in, plus Junos and Cisco IOS-XR via BYOI, that you can debug with show and clear and commit. The same lab works for RFC conformance research or a one-off protocol experiment.
Debugging Cisco–Juniper EVPN →Migration & upgrade validation
Test a BGP policy change, an IS-IS level-redistribution adjustment, or an IOS-XR version bump against a production-like multi-vendor topology before Change Advisory Board. Roll back and retry in minutes — not weeks of lab-request queue time.
Built for the 2am bug, not the annual interop event
EANTC's 2025 interoperability testran 82 test cases across 123 devices and 19 vendors over three weeks in Berlin. It's the industry's authoritative standards-conformance milestone — and it happens once a year, through a consultancy-gated process.
NetPilot is the on-demand operator companion. When EANTC's annual report flags a cross-vendor EVPN gotcha, your team can reproduce it in-house in minutes — no waiting twelve months for the next event, no consultancy engagement. When a customer escalation lands on Tuesday at 2am, you're not filing a lab request and waiting three weeks for gear to arrive; you're describing the topology in plain English and running the repro before the coffee pot refills.
ipSpace.net's "Multi-Vendor EVPN Just Works" analysis is the practitioner reference for what the cross-vendor lane actually looks like. NetPilot is how you reproduce what that analysis describes — reliably, in the cloud, on your schedule.
Protocols supported at carrier scale
Every protocol below runs on real vendor CLIs — Nokia SR Linux, FRR, and Linux built in; Cisco IOL / IOS-XR, Juniper cRPD / vMX, Arista cEOS, and Nokia SROS via BYOI (your licensed image, uploaded once). Not simulation. Not static analysis. Actual configuration, actual routing tables, actual debug output.
- BGP (eBGP, iBGP, MP-BGP, BGP-LU, BGP-LS, BGP PIC)
- EVPN (Type-2/3/5 routes, symmetric/asymmetric IRB, route-target handling)
- SR-MPLS (SR-TE, SR-MPLS-LSP, TI-LFA)
- SRv6 (uSID, endpoint behaviors, L3VPN over SRv6)
- MPLS L3VPN (RFC 4364) and L2VPN / VPLS / EVPN-VPWS
- IS-IS (multi-level, wide metrics) and OSPF (multi-area)
- PIM (ASM, SSM) and multicast over MPLS
- PCEP for SR-TE controllers
- ACL, RPKI validation, BGP flowspec
A Tier-1 NetOps engineer's Tuesday at 2am
The page comes in at 2:14am. A core router crashed under a malformed BGP UPDATE. A customer is escalating. The post-mortem is scheduled for Monday.
Traditional path. File a lab request with the internal physical-lab team. Wait two weeks while the gear is pulled from the retirement warehouse and racked. Week three: reproduce the packet by hand. Week four: iterate on the fix, test it, document it. Five weeks in, the post-mortem is closed — two weeks after the customer relationship already bruised.
NetPilot path. 2:20am: describe the topology to the agent in one paragraph. 2:22am: the lab is live with real Cisco IOS and Junos CLIs (your BYOI vendor images). 2:30am: the malformed packet injection reproduces the crash. 2:45am: a candidate fix is validated. By Wednesday the post-mortem draft is in review, and the customer update goes out before the weekly status call — not after.
Composite persona; no specific customer identified.
Bottom line for carrier and ISP research
Pick chassis-based testers (Keysight IxNetwork / VIAVI TestCenter) when you need:
- •100G / 400G / 800G+ line-rate traffic generation and RFC 2544 throughput certification — NetPilot does not replicate ASIC line-rate behavior
- •Hardware NPU / forwarding-plane behavior at scale and pre-deployment line-card sign-off
- •3GPP / 5G / cellular conformance and chassis-based performance validation for procurement
Pick NetPilot when you need:
- •AI-built multi-vendor labs from a plain-English prompt — 9+ network OSes and growing, no chassis, no quote cycle
- •Cloud lab running in ~2 minutes; cross-vendor BGP / EVPN / SR-MPLS bug reproduction on real network-OS CLIs — Nokia SR Linux built in; Cisco, Juniper, and Arista via BYOI
- •Dual-path control-plane iteration: drive the AI agent or SSH into real vendor CLIs to verify adjacencies and inspect label stacks
- •Built-in failure injection (Scapy malformed packets, tc netem loss / jitter / link flap) and artifact-ready reproducibility for the post-mortem
Verdict:For 100G+ line-rate certification and hardware forwarding-plane validation, Keysight IxNetwork and VIAVI TestCenter (formerly Spirent TestCenter) remain the right tools. For the 80% of ISP research that doesn't need line-rate — reproducing a cross-vendor BGP or EVPN bug, validating Segment Routing behavior, or running outage forensics — NetPilot is the on-demand, AI-native network emulator that gets a multi-vendor lab running in minutes, in the cloud.
Carrier & ISP FAQ
Scenario-phrased questions from NetOps practitioners.
Related reading
Network Research Lab (hub)
The parent hub — covers hyperscaler, vendor R&D, defense, academic, and open-networking segments.
Network Equipment R&D
Sibling segment — TAC case reproduction overflow, cross-vendor bug repro for vendor R&D teams.
Hyperscalers & Cloud Operators
Sibling segment — SONiC multi-vendor fabric validation, cross-vendor integration without chassis.
Keysight vs VIAVI TestCenter vs NetPilot (2026)
Honest comparison across 9 platforms — from six-figure hardware testers to AI-built cloud labs.
Reproduce a Cross-Vendor EVPN Bug in 10 Minutes
The Tier-1 carrier-style EVPN bug, compressed from 6 weeks to 10 minutes with AI-built labs and Scapy.
Carrier Outage Forensics in a Virtual Lab
The full post-mortem playbook — from paged alert to documented fix — in a reproducible lab.
Debugging Cisco–Juniper EVPN Interop
Route-target mismatches, Type-2 non-import, Proxy-ARP gotchas — reproducible labs for the common cross-vendor EVPN bugs.
BGP Fuzzing with Scapy and AI-Built Labs
Vulnerability-research workflow for reproducing CVE-class BGP UPDATE bugs against real vendor NOSes in the cloud.
Best Network Research Lab Platforms in 2026
Tier-ranked comparison of 10 platforms with a 6-row segment routing guide.
Ready to compress the post-mortem cycle?
Dedicated environment, custom vendor image support, SSO, audit, workflow integration — talk to us about a carrier research plan. Or spin up a free lab and try the cross-vendor bug repro yourself.