While I was busy fixing bugs in the netlab release 1.9.2, other contributors added exciting new features:

• Jeroen van Bemmel added the spanning tree and link aggregation configuration modules, initially implemented on Arista EOS, Cumulus Linux, and FRR.
• Dan Partelly added the netlab exec command that can execute the same command on a set of network devices, support for Edgeshark, and support for Cisco IOS on Linux (IOL) and Cisco IOS layer-2 image on Linux (IOLL2), the latter after a heroic uphill battle with ancient software (part 1, part 2).

Other new features include:

• Cisco IOSv and IOSvL2 running in vrnetlab containers
• First-hop gateways and DHCP clients/relays VLANs
• Changing interface names in virtual machines and containers.
• Packet capture for vrnetlab containers
• Consistent libvirt VM UUID for devices that generate serial number from VM UUID
• Enabling DHCP for all hosts connected to a link or VLAN with the dhcp.client link attribute
• Enable or disable VRRP on individual interfaces
• Node-level gateway parameters to set per-node VRRP priority
• Changing the containerlab ‘prefix’ attribute to change container names
• Support for the clab.dns attribute to set container DNS servers and search domain settings
• Alternate loopback pools make implementing a multi-site loopback addressing scheme easier.
• The check.config plugin removes missing custom configuration templates from lab devices, preventing crashes in Ansible playbooks.

Upgrading or Starting from Scratch?

• To upgrade, execute pip3 install --upgrade networklab.
• New to netlab? Start with the Getting Started document and the installation guide.
• Need help? Open a discussion or an issue in netlab GitHub repository.