Heavy Networking 658: Using Batfish To Model And Test Your Network

Today on Heavy Networking, modeling your network with Batfish. Batfish is an open-source project that builds a model of your production network based on a snapshot of your network and device configurations. Engineers can then test and validate changes against this model before making those changes to the production network. For example, you could double-check that an ACL is being correctly applied to the appropriate flows. Batfish works with networking equipment from multiple vendors including Arista, Cisco, Juniper. There’s also a commercial version, Batfish Enterprise, available from Intentionnet. Our guest is Rick Donato, a network automation trainer at Packet Coders. One of his courses is on Batfish and how to use it. He’s here to help us understand what Batfish is all about. We discuss: * Batfish vs. a virtual lab * How Batfish gets network information and builds models * Open source and commercial versions * Use cases and examples * Setting up and running Batfish * More Sponsor: ITProTV Start or grow your IT career with online training with ITProTV. Learn IT, pass your certs, and get a great job! Visit itpro.tv/packetpushers and use the promo code PACKETPUSHERS at checkout to get 30% off all plans. Sponsor: Internet Society Getting Internet access from low-earth-orbit satellites has great promise for addressing the digital divide, supporting disaster response, and creating new opportunities for communication. If you’re curious how about these systems work as well as the technological, and policy implications download the free whitepaper “Perspectives on Low Earth Orbit Satellite Systems for Internet access” by the Internet Society. Just go internetsociety.org/packetpushers. Show Links: Batfish.org Packet Coders Batfish: The What and the Why – Packet Coders @rickjdon – Rick Donato on Twitter @packetcoders – Packet Coders on Twitter