NetPilot

Carrier & ISP Network Research Lab

Reproduce cross-vendor bugs, run outage forensics, and validate migrations — in 10 minutes, not 6 weeks.

The on-demand alternative to Keysight IxNetwork for Tier-1 carrier operators who need to reproduce a bug, not certify a line card. AI builds a working multi-vendor lab — Cisco, Juniper, Nokia, Arista, FRR — in about two minutes, in the cloud, with real device CLIs.

Cross-vendor bug repro in minutes
Malformed packet injection + tc netem
No chassis, no quote cycle
See the comparison: Keysight vs VIAVI vs ContainerLab vs NetPilot →

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.

DimensionKeysight IxNetworkVIAVI TestCenterContainerLab (DIY)Cisco CMLNetPilot
AI-built from plain-English prompt❌❌❌❌✅
Multi-vendor (Cisco / Juniper / Nokia / Arista)✅✅⚠️ BYOI❌ Cisco only✅
Real device CLIs (Junos, IOS-XR, NX-OS, SR Linux)✅✅✅✅ Cisco only✅
Cloud self-serve (no chassis)❌ chassis + quote❌ chassis / AWS VE⚠️ self-hostedVM✅
Time to first labWeeks (procurement)WeeksHours–days (setup)~1 hour~2 minutes
Failure injection (malformed packets, loss, link flap)✅ hardware✅ appliance⚠️ DIY (Scapy + tc)Limited✅ built-in
Price tier$$$$$ (6-figure)$$$$$ (6-figure)Free (+ infra)$–$$Enterprise (contact)
Anchor scenario

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 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.

Full scenario walkthrough

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, 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 — Cisco vs Juniper vs Arista vs Nokia — 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 Junos and Cisco IOS-XR behavior 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.

Operator-side lane

Built for the 2am bug, not the annual interop event

EANTC's 2025 interoperability test ran 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 — Cisco IOL / IOS-XR, Juniper cRPD / vMX, Nokia SR Linux / SROS, Arista cEOS, FRR, Linux. 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. 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.

Carrier & ISP FAQ

Scenario-phrased questions from NetOps practitioners.

Describe the topology in plain English — for example, 'Cisco IOL router and Juniper cRPD in EVPN peering, Linux endpoint with Scapy for malformed packet generation.' NetPilot deploys the lab in under 2 minutes with real Cisco IOS and Junos CLIs. SSH in, run show commands, inject the malformed EVPN packet from the Linux endpoint, and observe the vendor's behavior reproducibly. What traditionally takes 6 weeks of hardware sourcing compresses to ~10 minutes.
Yes — NetPilot is purpose-built for this lane. Keysight IxNetwork and VIAVI TestCenter (formerly Spirent TestCenter) own 100G+ line-rate certification and chassis-based performance validation. NetPilot is the operator-side complement: prompt-driven multi-vendor lab, cloud self-serve, deployed in minutes. Use Keysight when you need line-rate. Use NetPilot when you need to reproduce a specific cross-vendor protocol bug without a chassis or a quote cycle.
Yes. CVE-2025-21602 is a publicly documented Juniper Junos BGP UPDATE crash with a published Scapy proof-of-concept. In NetPilot, describe a lab with Juniper cRPD, a Cisco IOL or Linux BGP peer, and a Linux endpoint with Scapy — the lab deploys in ~2 minutes with real Junos CLI. Run the public POC against the Juniper device and observe the crash reproducibly. Iterate on mitigations. Cross-vendor BGP bug reproduction was the motivating use case.
Describe the topology — for example, 'Cisco IOS-XR, Juniper cRPD, and Nokia SR Linux in an SR-MPLS data plane with an SR-TE policy and a BGP-LU overlay.' NetPilot generates per-vendor configurations (Cisco segment-routing mpls, Junos protocols source-packet-routing, Nokia sr mpls) and deploys the lab in ~2 minutes. Real CLIs mean you can verify adjacencies, inspect MPLS label stacks, and validate BGP-LU behavior exactly as you would in production.
Yes — every NetPilot lab includes Linux endpoint(s) with Scapy and tc netem preinstalled. Scapy crafts malformed packets (BGP UPDATE, EVPN Type-2, OSPF LSAs, custom headers). tc netem injects packet loss, latency, jitter, duplication, reordering, rate limiting, and link flap scripts. Both are scriptable and reproducible across lab runs — use cases span carrier-grade failure injection, chaos testing, RFC-non-compliant packet behavior, and malformed-input vulnerability research.
EANTC's annual multi-vendor interop (in 2025: 82 test cases, 123 devices, 19 vendors, 3 weeks in Berlin) is the authoritative industry event for standards-conformance testing. NetPilot is the on-demand operator companion: when EANTC's report flags a cross-vendor gotcha, NetPilot lets your team reproduce it in-house in minutes — any time, no consultancy slot. Think of EANTC as the annual acceptance test; NetPilot as the 2am reproducibility tool.
Yes. NetPilot is built on ContainerLab and supports Nokia SR Linux (free from Nokia) and FRR natively. Cisco IOL, Juniper cRPD, Arista cEOS, Palo Alto PAN-OS, and Fortinet FortiGate are supported under bring-your-own-image (BYOI) — you upload your licensed vendor image once. Enterprise plans add support for Cisco IOS-XR, SONiC, and custom NOS integrations under a dedicated environment.
Built-in (no BYOI): Nokia SR Linux, FRR, and Linux endpoints. These are free to run under Nokia's open license and open source. BYOI (upload once, use anywhere): Cisco IOL, Juniper cRPD, Arista cEOS, Palo Alto PAN-OS, Fortinet FortiGate — you need a legal image from your vendor relationship. Enterprise plans add custom NOS integrations including SONiC and Cisco IOS-XR. NetPilot does not distribute commercial vendor images.

Related reading

Deeper dives on the scenarios and workflows above.

Comparison

Keysight vs VIAVI TestCenter vs NetPilot: Research Lab Comparison 2026

Honest comparison across 9 platforms — from six-figure hardware testers to AI-built cloud labs.

Case Study

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.

Guide

Carrier Outage Forensics in a Virtual Lab

The full post-mortem playbook — from paged alert to documented fix — in a reproducible lab.

Tutorial

Debugging Cisco–Juniper EVPN Interop Issues

Route-target mismatches, Type-2 non-import, Proxy-ARP gotchas — reproducible labs for the three most common cross-vendor EVPN bugs.

Tutorial

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.

Hub

Network Research Lab

The parent hub — covers hyperscaler, vendor R&D, defense, academic, and open-networking segments.

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.