My Source of Truth Tool Has a Built-In Discovery Feature. How is IP Fabric’s Discovery Different?

Most built-in discovery features have some or all of the following limitations: They only cover specific vendors or domains The rely on Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) They can’t reliably map Layer 2–Layer 3 topologies IP Fabric takes a different approach using CLI (Command Line Interface) and API discovery hopping from device to device to map neighbor relationships until every device—across every vendor—is found. This creates a normalized model of cloud and network behavior that spans Layer 1–Layer 3 topologies, which IP Fabric contextualizes with application data from external tools like Illumio. This app-aware model can be used to validate your Source of Truth, ensuring that it’s always complete and accurate.

What Source of Truth Tools Does IP Fabric Integrate With?

IP Fabric can feed normalized network data into any tool via API. Customers often integrate IP Fabric with NetBox, Nautobot, Infoblox, and ServiceNow, among other tools. IP Fabric also integrates with any LLM via our enterprise-grade MCP server, which you can use to check for drift, validate your Source of Truth, and more, all in natural language.

Does IP Fabric Overwrite My Existing Source of Truth?

No. IP Fabric will create a dedicated branch in your Source of Truth based on your latest snapshot, leaving your main branch intact. Your team can review the new branch before deciding what to merge, ensuring that you stay in complete control of your Source of Truth.

How Often Can I Sync My Source of Truth With IP Fabric?

You control how and when IP Fabric syncs with your Source of Truth. You can choose to sync: Automatically, whenever IP Fabric generates a new snapshot. Automatically, on a recurring schedule. Manually, whenever you ask for it. Most customers choose to update whenever they take a new snapshot, as it ensures that your Source of Truth is based on the most current understanding of network behavior.

Can IP Fabric Replace My Source of Truth?

No, and it shouldn’t have to. A Source of Truth shouldn’t be a static record you maintain by hand, but rather a continuous feedback loop based on your network’s actual behavior. IP Fabric powers that loop by discovering a complete inventory of your devices and configurations, validating your records against your observed cloud and network behavior, and feeding fresh, verified data to every tool in your ecosystem.

Source of Truth Accuracy

Continuously validate your network Source of Truth (SoT) or CMDB against an application-aware network digital twin.

Transcript

Transcript: Source of Truth Accuracy

Tools like netbox, not service now or
even Excel are your sources of intent,
often called your sources of truth. They
tell you what your network is supposed
to look like, whereas IP fabric shows
you what’s actually there using its own
CLI and API based discovery. It builds a
complete and accurate picture of your
network and cloud environment, not
what’s documented, but what’s actually
running in your infrastructure.
And we know the network keeps changing.
But the question with those changes, can
you actually still trust your source of
truth or your CMDB?
In this example, you can see some asset
in service now that haven’t been updated
in quite some time. Now, can you trust
the information that we’re seeing in
here? Probably not. Do you know if
everyone in your organization is
following all the correct processes to
update this information as soon as it
needs updated? Now what we’re seeing is
devices that have been automatically
updated by IP fabric in service now. So
now if we look at this device and check
its serial number it OS version now we
know it’s accurate but we’re not just
bringing this for IP fabric we’re also
bringing the relationship between other
devices
the parent and child relationship which
helps us building the dependency
mapping. So now we know if something
affect that device what could be the
other impact. Going back to IP fabric
now we’re showing the v the vis the
diagram of your infrastructure. So again
IP fabric is not just about extracting
information about individual devices but
it’s really understanding how they
interact with each other.
So now what you have is it’s not just an
inventory of your infrastructure but
it’s really an understanding of how it’s
been built
and all this without having any manual
effort to do once the discovery is done
you would see all that information
that same accurate model IP fabric build
is also what customer use to build the
compliance dashboard and evidence
auditor ask for that we will show in
other use cases. is
sources of truth need IP fabric to
provide a complete and accurate
understanding of network behavior and
uncover the differences between intent
and the actual state of your network and
cloud environments. That gap between
intent and reality is drift and you
can’t fix what you can’t see. IP Fabric
detects it automatically so it never
goes unnoticed.

Your SoT Says One Thing.
Your Network Says Another.

IP Fabric validates your SoT against a verified model of your environment, so you can trust that every SoT-based workflow is grounded in the most complete and updated data.

IP Fabric helps us detect the gaps between reality and documentation.

Frédéric Machado

Network Administrator

@ CHU Toulouse

Read Customer Story

Compare Your SoT Against Reality

Capture your actual cloud and network behavior and compare it against tools like NetBox and ServiceNow to surface any inconsistencies, such as:

Devices that appear in your SoT, but not IP Fabric
Devices that appear in IP Fabric, but not your SoT
Devices that appear in both, with differences between them

Graphic showing how IP Fabric compares its discovery snapshot against NetBox's IPAM and inventory in 5 minutes and 39 seconds

Detect & Remediate Drift

Send webhooks to Ansible, ServiceNow, or other tools to kick off the remediation process. Let IP Fabric generate deterministic insights to populate change management tickets, including:

Change justifications
Implementation plans
Risk & impact analyses
Rollback & test plans

Change Management with IP Fabric Network Digital Twin

De-Risk AI & Automation

Ensure that every downstream workflow is based on the most complete and accurate understanding of cloud, network, and application behavior. Validate every automated workflow after it runs to prove continuous resilience, security, and compliance.