About the Project

In 2023, I started the Open-Source BGP Labs project to recreate the labs I created in the early 1990s. As I posted a status update a year later, Henk Smit suggested I do the same for IS-IS.

Those two projects were largely complete in late 2025, and it was time for another one. VXLAN/EVPN seemed like a no-brainer; welcome to the Open-Source VXLAN/EVPN Configuration Labs project.

The project uses netlab1 to set up the labs. You can use whatever networking devices you wish to work on, and if they happen to be supported by netlab, you’ll get lab topology and basic device configuration for each lab set up in seconds2. Some lab exercises use additional (external) VXLAN/EVPN devices. We tested the labs with Arista EOS switches; you could also choose a few other devices.

You’ll find the lab topology files in a GitHub repository, but you might explore the lab exercises first.

As always, everything starts with a long wish list. I probably missed something important – please open an issue or a discussion, or (even better) become a contributor and submit a PR.

  1. When you happen to have a Hammer of Thor handy, everything looks like a nail waiting to be hit ;) ↩

  2. Unless you love using resource hogs like Nexus OS or some Junos variants. ↩