De-Risk SD-WAN With a Network Digital Twin

Hello everyone. My name is Zach Brown
and I’m a solutions architect here at IP
Fabric and I’m here to talk to you today
about IP Fabric’s digital twin
capabilities.
In today’s hybrid multi- vendor network
environments, even the smallest change
can trigger massive outages, compliance
violations, or worse, downtime.
That’s why leading enterprises trust IP
fabric, the automated network assurance
platform
to build a digital twin of their entire
network, providing deep visibility, safe
planning, continuous validation, all at
scale.
In this video, we’ll show you how our
digital twin simulation capabilities
solve five critical challenges faced by
modern enterprises and operations teams
and how you can move from a reactive to
a proactive approach with confidence.
So, first we’re going to talk about our
first area which is multi- vendor
integration. So here IP fabric IP fabric
discovers and builds topologies for
heterogeneous network environments all
map to our interface making switching
between tools and different uh user
interfaces unnecessary
and it all starts with IP fabric’s
discovery process. So here on the screen
I have pulled up a snippet of our
discovery process and here is a quick
glimpse of that discovery process. So we
have a list of devices that IP fabric
discovered and if you take a peek here
all different kinds Juniper, Arista,
AWS, Cisco. So very diverse
heterogeneous environments. Also, we
have the device count as well as how
long IP fabric took to discover in my
case these 93 devices.
So, very robust snapshotting and
discovery process. Now, one of the
residuals of this discovery process is
IP Fabric’s full device inventory.
So with IP Fabric’s digital twin
capabilities, IP Fabric automatically
discovers and normalizes inventory data
so that it’s easily digestible in our
tables. So you can simulate your entire
network regardless of vendor and have
the intelligence of exactly what is in
your infrastructure.
So as I scroll over here, you can see I
have my full device inventory as well as
which platform operating systems and
versions I’m using. So very robust and
IP fabric is once again meant to
integrate into multi- vendor
environments.
Next we’re going to talk about network
state modeling, network migration
planning, and change impact analysis.
So, IP Fabric takes snapshots of your
live network, allowing you to model,
visualize, and analyze the state of your
infrastructure at any point in time.
Need to validate your routing behavior
from last month or simulate a new
routing protocol? Done. This is your
live network frozen in time available on
demand. So once that discovery snapshot
has has completed which we talked about
earlier, we have the network devices
discovered and full device inventory
compiled. IP fabric then visualizes this
with our dynamic diagrams. With these
diagrams you can run end toend path
simulation to get a device by device
analysis of the packet logic and exactly
how it’s moving from source to
destination. So here as I’m pulling up
my path simulation feature, you may
notice I have a host in one of my sites
and I am simulating the traffic flow to
remote site here in Prague. So as I
click through my platform and I click my
first device, I have my full packet of
logic as well as my decision making
table showing how I’m moving from source
to destination. Now, if you take a look
at this path, I have my first layers
three switch here. And now you can see
IP fabric is now taking a look at the
routing and ARP tables since we’re
moving on up that network stack. Also,
as I click on my firewall, you notice
it’s illuminated in red, showing me that
something is blocking my traffic. So I
have my access control policy here and
if I click I can see the exact access
control entry that’s blocking that
traffic as well as further down the path
I have a firewall here in green. If I
right click and click explore I’m able
to see that that access control policy
is allowing my traffic. Also to further
analyze our network model, IP fabric
allows you to compare changes in the
network, spotting when anything changes
instantly. So as I go and switch to my
next snapshot here, I’m able to see
exactly how my infrastructure has
changed between two snapshots. So what’s
red is what was previously in the
infrastructure and green is how my
infrastructure has changed over time. So
IP fabric really helps you visualizes
those changes really cutting down on
that meantime to remediation if you have
any problems with your network. So with
IP fabric engineers can compare those
snapshots before and after events or
changes to the network to be able to
spot changes instantly.
So, planning a migration, moving to
SDWAN or the cloud? IP Fabric’s digital
twin simulation simulates those traffic
paths, validate segments, and ensures
nothing breaks before ever touching one
single cable. So, you’re able to test
your migration logic safely, accurately,
and have a consistent approach to
managing your network. With IP fabric,
you can do comprehensive dependency
analysis to accelerate that migration
process and reduce project timeline and
risk even in hybrid networks.
So in our path simulation feature, we
even have the opportunity to get more
granular with what we test, even
controlling what ports as well as what
IP addresses we can test. really giving
us the peace of mind that when we make
changes to a access control list that
nothing breaks when we go to production.
A healthc care provider that IP fabrics
work with firewalls team needed to
expand the subnet and open ports for a
new application. using IP fabric. They
simulated the change and were and
discovered that it exposed internal
services to the internet which would
have been a huge hippo violation and
opened them up to additional fines.
Now as I move into our next point uh
configuration compliance and validation
here is our overview dashboard with a
mix of IP fabric custom wizage and
outofbox intent checks built for
inventory security posture compliance as
well as configuration management. So at
IP Fabric, a telecommunications provider
used IP Fabric to enforce PCI DSS
compliance across hundreds of routers
within minutes. With IP Fabric, they
were able to discover 30 plus devices
with TNET and legacy SNMP and were able
to close the gap all before their eyes.
Here with IP Fabric’s intent checks, we
have the ability to see, do I in my
environment have any devices with TA
enabled? So, we’re able to close those
gaps and further fortify our network
with IP Fabric’s digital twin
capabilities. So IP fabric doesn’t just
simulate behavior. It also continually
audits every device config against best
practices, regulatory compliance
policies, and your own intent.
You’ll know when compliance is broken
automatically with IP Fabric. Also from
the IP Fabric interface at your
fingertips, you have all your network
devices running configurations. So you
can compare these over time. As soon as
changes happen, outages occur or traffic
is flowing from a different path, you
can see what changed from a
configuration standpoint in addition to
those architectural changes as we
discussed earlier. So as a demonstration
of that, I am just clicking two host
names in my environment and comparing
the configurations from two different
points in times. So in green you can see
what has changed. In red you can see
what’s removed between those two
configurations. So easily you’re able to
validate your configurations and get
ahead of any potential configuration
drift.
So with IP Fabric’s digital twin
simulation, your team can stop
firefighting and start proactively
managing network health risk and
performance. Whether you’re planning
migrations, validating changes, or
ensuring compliance, you’ll always know
before it breaks. And for enterprise
leaders, it means faster project
delivery, fewer hour, fewer outages,
stronger compliance, and complete
network transparently without the
guesswork.
You’re ready to see it in your
environment? Book a demo or start a free
trial at ipfabric.io.
Thank you for your time.

So we’ve just got a quick overview of of
IP fabric as a platform. What we’re
doing is we’re gathering data directly
from network nodes using CLI or API and
that will be inventory data,
configuration, state, policy. But then
the clever piece is where we analyze it
to build topology and a model of the
understanding of that
interconnectedness whether you’re
talking onrem infrastructure or cloud.
The analytics layer runs a rule over
that uh over that model and using our
own experience and knowledge um and
external data sets we’ve developed
dozens of standard checks that you
automatically run as part of our
discovery process. Now the results of
that can be consumed directly by users
in our UI or through our extensive API.
We integrate with all manner of
operational tooling to give access to
that intelligence to whoever needs it.

So we’ve just got a quick overview of of
IP fabric as a platform. What we’re
doing is we’re gathering data directly
from network nodes using CLI or API and
that will be inventory data,
configuration, state, policy. But then
the clever piece is where we analyze it
to build topology and a model of the
understanding of that
interconnectedness whether you’re
talking onrem infrastructure or cloud.
The analytics layer runs a rule over
that uh over that model and using our
own experience and knowledge um and
external data sets we’ve developed
dozens of standard checks that you
automatically run as part of our
discovery process. Now the results of
that can be consumed directly by users
in our UI or through our extensive API.
We integrate with all manner of
operational tooling to give access to
that intelligence to whoever needs it.

Hi, I’m Sean, solution architect at
Pabic. Today we’re going to discuss the
use case about change management. For a
good change management, the process is
you need to make sure you’ve got the
correct information before your change.
all the pre-change checks that you’re
going to perform, making sure you’ve got
the correct understanding of what you
have so that you know what to change.
Once you’ve done your change, you want
to perform the correct post change
checks which are going to make sure that
what you’ve done is only affected the
intention and that you haven’t had any
side effect or something else that has
broke because of the change you’ve
performed. So today we’re going to
discuss how IP fabric can help with the
pre-checks and also the post checks to
simplify the process and also make it
more reliable to avoid any side effect
and unwanted surprises that you’ll get
the next morning because of things that
was obvious but you didn’t see because
of uh the time constraint of the change
window.
So if we look at the screen over here,
what we see is a network diagram. So
this is going to be based on the
discovery IP fabric is going to perform.
So now you have accurate information
that you can see of what is the current
state of my network and this is the
information that you need before doing a
change when you’re starting to prepare a
change. In this situation, what we’re
actually going to see is instead of just
seeing the diagram, I also want to see
some useful information where in my
situation, I’ve got single points of
failure in my network. And the one we’re
going to look at is those devices. I can
see that they are single attached the
two switches at the end. And this is one
of the issue that we want to fix with
the change. This is looking at it from a
technical perspective. But if we look at
the value side of it, what this is is
those are now two switches that don’t
have any resiliency. So what happens if
one of those link fail instead of losing
potentially just some throughput into
your network now what you’re affecting
is the server that may be connected to
it. So the application that’s running on
that server and now you’ve got a
business impact just because of
something that was unknown to the
network team that maybe was not
correctly monitored. So you have that
issue in your network that you may not
be aware. So having a visual
representation of your network allows
you to see those single point of failure
or to see other issues that you have.
But now when you’re about to talk about
the change is making sure what are the
interfaces that I need to use, what is
currently in use, what is not. You can’t
always rely on the vis diagram that was
last updated 6 months or two years ago.
So you will have to go manually to that
device to find out tell me which one are
the interfaces enabled, which one are in
use, which one have been reserved by
someone. So all that’s those steps which
are normally done manually at text time.
Now you’ve got the data that you need to
prepare your change available with a few
clicks in the right table to see the
information that you want to see.
So this is one side that we’re going to
look at. The other thing that we’re
doing in that change as well is we’re
going to change the routing for example
in here. And again now from that
perspective we’re not just looking at
relationship between devices but I also
want to see how is the network behaving
so that if I’ve got a user connected to
that site that wants to talk to
somewhere else in the network how does
it look like? So for that if I use the
path lookup and I’m going to use for
this one that I’ve got already
prepopulated as a source destination.
What I’m saying is I’ve got a source in
here that to go to a specific
destination on my SSH port, I can see
I’m being dropped by the firewall. Now,
if I want to go further, I can say,
okay, I want to continue. And now this
is the path. If the firewall was not
blocking that flow, how to reach my
destination.
So now again, let’s think from a change
perspective. What I’m trying to achieve
is I also want to make sure that now
this user can speak to this but at the
same time I’m seeing that there is only
a single
uh path between this site and the MLS
which I want to fix because I want more
resiliency and I’m going to enable that
as part of my change. So I’ve got the
information that I need. I can
understand that I’ve got a firewall
blocking the flow. And if I go back to
my topology, I know how things are
interconnected. So what I need to do
from a change perspective. So I’ve
prepared the change. I’ve now executed
my change. And now what I want to do is
look at the statuses that I’ve got
afterwards. I can already see something
has changed in here visually. I can also
see the those switches are now dual
attached. So maybe what I want to do is
compare visually those two topology.
So what this allows me to see is very
quickly I can again without having to
log to any single device I can check
that yes I can see things have changed
in here things in red have been removed
since in green added same in here I can
see that those switches are dual touch
it looks like I’ve achieved what I
wanted to do which is restore that
connectivity in here and change
something from a routting perspective
there.
So now I’ve looked at it from the
relationship perspective in the topology
but I can use the past lookup as well
and show the exact same end to end where
now what we see is the firewall has been
updated as well where before it was in
red for the same path now it’s in green
but now I can also see the difference in
the path as well there. So again if I
reproduce the compare those two snapshot
that’s what we had before and this is
the path that we see after where we’ve
enabled that path to go between this
site to the MS to reach the destination.
So the the pre and post check all those
checks and verification can be done
visually using IP fabric. You can now
see the impact that your change had on
the network ensuring that only what you
wanted to change has been updated. This
is the representation using the path
lookup visually. But you also have maybe
more related to from a compliance or
standardization perspective. You could
use the dashboard or other mechanism or
places in IP fabric where you can have
that assurance that the change you’ve
performed has been accomplished as
expected.
Okay. Um, so now what we’ve shown here
is how IP Fabric’s data can help from a
pre and post check perspective by
providing you with the right data, the
data that you need to understand the
network at scale because your network is
not just one or two devices is how all
those devices talking to each other. So
the goal of IP fabric in that situation
is after each snapshot is to represent
the network the way it behaves. So what
we’ve seen right now is how IP Fabric
can help from a pre and post change
perspective by providing you the right
data, the data that you need to ensure
that everything has been performed the
way you wanted it to. If I summarize
what we’ve done is IP fabric is going to
give you that confidence first by
ensuring how things are before the
change so that you’ve got you can
prepare the change accordingly but also
checking that once the change has been
performed things are still as you would
expect that there’s not been any side
effect so that nothing has changed in a
unwanted way by checking different
compliance dashboard or standardization.
So you ensure that everything is as
expected. IP fabric in the case of
change management is going to provide a
lot more efficiency for your engineers
so that they can perform their post
check as scale by not having to manually
connect to a few devices and run show
commands but having the full view of
your network in one table or one diagram
so that you can quickly see that
everything has been changed the way you
would expect it to. And now if you want
to have any further details with change
management and see how P fabric can help
you with this feel free to get in touch
with us.