Changes in Release 26.07

New Functionality

• The multiserver plugin distributes containerlab devices across multiple servers.

• The GRE tunnel plugin supports GRE tunnels on Cisco IOS, FRR, VyOS, and Junos (vSRX and vJunos-router).

• The WireGuard tunnel plugin supports WireGuard tunnels on FRR.

• The bgp.session plugin and the OSPF module support graceful restart on Arista EOS, BIRD, FortiOS, and FRR

• The bgp.policy plugin supports the bgp.role attribute on FRR and BIRD.

Minor changes and improvements

• The netlab status command displays IPv6 management addresses.

• Validation plugins can check BFD state in BGP neighbor details, use platform-independent parameters, and mark expected failures.

• Configuration templates can use directories in the package:extra template search path.

• Filter static route node next hops by link name

New Device Features

Arista EOS:

• BGP graceful restart

BIRD:

• BGP confederations

• VXLAN data plane and EVPN MAC VRFs

• Anycast gateways

• Indirect static routes

• VRFs, including BGP, OSPF, static routing, and route leaking

• OSPF default route origination, graceful restart, and BFD

• Unify BIRD Dockerfile variants. The BIRD container version you want to build is now selected with the netlab clab build --version parameter

FortiOS:

• BGP

• OSPF route import, default route origination, and graceful restart

FRR:

• BGP and OSPF graceful restart

• GRE and WireGuard tunnels

Junos:

• GRE tunnels on vSRX and vJunos-router

Mikrotik RouterOS7:

• New BGP configuration templates work with recent software releases (tested with release 7.21.4)

• BFD for OSPF

• BGP per-address-family activation

• VXLAN, including IPv6 VTEPs

OpenBSD:

• VLANs

Nokia SR Linux:

• Inter-VRF route leaking

Nokia SR OS/SR SIM:

• Use correct interface names in BFD configuration templates

VyOS:

• GRE tunnels

Fixes in Configuration Templates

Aruba CX:

• Configure VRF BGP session parameters

BIRD:

• Configure IBGP sessions with the BGP source interface

• Correct VRF static route configuration

• Use Debian Trixie as the base image for BIRD containers

• Install procps in BIRD containers

• Start the BIRD daemon after the data-plane configuration creates the required interfaces

Cisco IOL L2:

• BFD does not work with OSPFv3

Dell OS10:

• Reject topologies with tagged VLAN 1

Extreme EXOS:

• Reject topologies with tagged VLAN 1

FRR:

• Write device logs to /var/log/frr and include a configurable frr.logfile attribute

• Mirror file logging to container stdout when doing debugging

• Unify Linux interface sysctl settings across uplinks, VLAN, and tunnel interfaces

Mikrotik RouterOS7:

• Block untagged frames on trunks without a native VLAN

• Support native routed VLANs and prevent invalid tagged VLAN 1 configuration

Nokia SR Linux:

• Reject topologies that use more than one MPLS/VPN route target

OpenBSD:

• Use node/group variables for OpenBSD username/password

VyOS:

• Configure EVPN L3VNI and BFD profiles correctly

Breaking changes

• The VirtualBox provider has been removed.

• BIRD v3 is now the default BIRD version. Specify an older version explicitly if needed.

• Mikrotik RouterOS BGP templates use the current BGP configuration syntax. Use a recent RouterOS release; 7.21.4 was used in our tests.

Bug Fixes

• FortiOS configuration collection works with current FortiOS releases returning HTTP 405, and configuration deployment falls back to the CLI only after rejected API commands (#3465, #3466)

• netlab initial no longer fails when a device log file is absent (#3471)

• The anycast validation plugin handles devices without a gateway.protocol attribute (#3474)

• vMX SSH readiness uses an appropriate timeout (#3483, #3486)

• netlab status generates correct IPv6 tool URLs (#3550)

• Ping validation uses the complete packet length, and BGP neighbor validation correctly handles address-family activation (#3579, #3580, #3591)

• Fix: Ensure the VRF BGP data always has ‘neighbors’ list (#3614)

• Fix missing ‘f’ for Python f-strings (#3598)

• Generic ‘include module/plugin config into initial config’ framework (#3593)

• Add BFD checks to bgp_neighbor_details validation plugin (#3534)

• Fix bgp_neighbor validation plugin implementations (#3580)

• Add ‘_expect_fail’ parameter to validation tests (#3578)

• Convert built-in plugins to module names (#3575)

• Standardize tested device names in integration tests (#3536)

• ‘Get node interface’ utility functions

• Use correct literal IPv6 addrs in tool URLs (#3550)

• When needed, add static default routes when originating BGP default routes (#3527)

• Speed up static routing tests with small OSPF timers

• _remove_when_false: remove dicts with False values (#3517)

• Support per-module dataplane script and control-plane config for daemons (#3512)

• Check returned STDERR and STDOUT in validation tests (#3502)

• Refactor clab provider into multiple files (#3473)

• Do not try to extract warnings without a log file (#3471)

• Simplify main ‘lab_commands’ function (#3464)

• Check device support for bgp.remove_private_as values (#3463)

Documentation Fixes

• Documented how to increase netlab initial wait times (#3619)

• Updated the BFD-for-BGP support table (#3620)

• Improved command descriptions in the README (#3493)

• Reorganized plugin manual-page documentation and clarified multiserver plugin tables

• Split and cleaned up data-type validation documentation (#3516)