Netpen

Visual editor and API for network environments script generation

Creating network environment scripts for new feature testing or bug reproduction can be cumbersome - defining network namespaces, setting up different network interfaces types, assigning addresses, configuring routes, vrfs, etc..

Using this project one can visually define network netspaces, veth devices, different tunneling devices, etc. and generates bash scripts usable on fresh VMs which include the necessary configuration including address assignments and routes.

⚠️ These scripts are NOT intended for a production environments.

Current Item Types

• Network Namespace
• VETH
• Bridge
• VLAN
• MACVLAN
• Team
• XFRM transport
• Tunnels:
  • XFRM
  • IPIP
  • VXLAN
  • GRE
  • WireGuard
  • L2TP
• Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)
• eBPF Program

Examples

Simple Router

The resulting script will create three network namespaces - "a", "b", and "router".

Running on a fresh VM:

root@(none):/# ./netpen.sh
 ____                 _
|  _ \   ___   _   _ | |_   ___  _ __
| |_) | / _ \ | | | || __| / _ \| '__|
|  _ < | (_) || |_| || |_ |  __/| |
|_| \_\ \___/  \__,_| \__| \___||_|


+-----------+------------------------------------+
| Namespace | IPv4                               |
+-----------+------------------------------------+
|     a     | 198.51.100.130/25 (atorouter.dev1) |
+-----------+------------------------------------+
|     b     | 198.51.100.2/25 (btorouter.dev1)   |
+-----------+------------------------------------+
|   router  | 198.51.100.129/25 (atorouter.dev2) |
|           | 198.51.100.1/25 (btorouter.dev2)   |
+-----------+------------------------------------+
net.ipv4.route.mtu_expires = 15
net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding = 1
net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding = 2
net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding = 1
net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding = 2
net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding = 1
net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding = 2
[   10.578767] ip (1451) used greatest stack depth: 12224 bytes left
[   10.769523] random: crng init done
[   10.777003] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): atorouter.dev1: link becomes ready
[   10.923704] ip (1460) used greatest stack depth: 12096 bytes left
[   11.121881] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): btorouter.dev1: link becomes ready
root@(none):/# [   11.578224] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): atorouter.dev2: link becomes ready

root@(none):/# ip netns exec a ping 198.51.100.2
PING 198.51.100.1 (198.51.100.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 198.51.100.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=63 time=7.00 ms
64 bytes from 198.51.100.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=63 time=0.956 ms

Run Locally

Clone the project

  git clone https://github.com/ebirger/netpen.git

Go to the project directory

  cd netpen

Start the servers

  make dev

This will bring up a local docker-compose based environment. You can then browse to http://localhost:8199/

(Optional) Rebuild the Docker images after modifying if needed

  make build-dev

Running Tests

Validation Tests

These test perform basic validation such as code linting. To run them, use the following command:

  make validation-tests

System Tests

These tests perform functional validation of the backend logic.

To run them, use the following command:

  make system-tests

API Reference

Generate BASH script

  POST /v1/bash

Parameter	Type	Description
body	string	Required. YAML file describing the network topology

You can try this using cURL:

curl --data-binary "@examples/router.yml" https://api.netpen.io/v1/bash

Or HTTPie:

cat ./examples/router.yml | http POST https://api.netpen.io/v1/bash

Generate Graphviz DOT document

  POST /v1/dot

Parameter	Type	Description
body	string	Required. YAML file describing the network topology

You can pipe this via Graphviz, for example:

curl --data-binary "@examples/router.yml" https://api.netpen.io/v1/dot | dot -Tpng | display

Tech Stack

Frontend: React, antd

Backend: Python, Flask (local) / AWS API GW & Lambda (deployed)

Logo

Logo design by Amir Rave

License

MIT