EVPN Ninja

The Ultimate VXLAN/EVPN Fabric Planning & Configuration Tool

Features • Installation • Quick Start • Commands • Vendors • Lab Export

Overview

EVPN Ninja is a powerful cross-platform CLI tool designed for network engineers to plan, calculate, and generate configurations for VXLAN/EVPN data center fabrics. Whether you're designing a small campus network or a large-scale multi-tenant datacenter, EVPN Ninja has you covered.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Plan → Calculate → Generate → Deploy                          │
│                                                                 │
│  ┌───────┐    ┌───────────┐    ┌──────────┐    ┌───────────┐  │
│  │Fabric │ => │ IP Plans  │ => │  Configs │ => │Containerlab│ │
│  │Design │    │ VNI/ASN   │    │ 18 Vendors│   │EVE-NG/GNS3│  │
│  └───────┘    └───────────┘    └──────────┘    └───────────┘  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

✨ Features

Calculators

Calculator	Description
MTU	Calculate VXLAN encapsulation overhead with detailed layer-by-layer breakdown
VNI Allocation	Plan VNI assignments using VLAN-based, tenant-based, or sequential schemes
Fabric Parameters	Generate complete IP addressing plans for leaf-spine topologies
EVPN Parameters	Calculate RD/RT values and generate production-ready vendor configs
eBGP Underlay	Design RFC 7938 compliant eBGP underlay with ASN allocation
Multicast Groups	Plan multicast group assignments for BUM traffic replication
Route Reflector	Calculate BGP RR placement and cluster configurations
Bandwidth	Estimate fabric bandwidth and oversubscription ratios
Multi-homing	Generate ESI, LACP, and ES-RT for EVPN multi-homing
Topology	Visualize fabric topology in ASCII or Graphviz DOT format

Key Capabilities

18 Vendor Support — Generate configs for Arista, Cisco, Juniper, Nokia, and 14 more vendors
Lab Export — Export to Containerlab, EVE-NG, and GNS3 for instant lab deployment
Presets — Built-in presets for small, medium, and large datacenters
Config File — Save your defaults in ~/.evpn-ninja.yaml
Multiple Outputs — Table, JSON, or YAML output for automation
IP Validation — Automatic overlap and capacity checks for IP networks
Interactive Mode — Guided wizard for beginners

📦 Installation

From PyPI

pip install evpn-ninja

From Source

git clone https://github.com/ashimov/evpn-ninja.git
cd evpn-ninja
pip install -e .

Standalone Binary

Download prebuilt binaries from GitHub Releases:

Platform	File
Linux (x64)	`evpn-ninja-linux-amd64`
macOS (Intel)	`evpn-ninja-macos-amd64`
macOS (Apple Silicon)	`evpn-ninja-macos-arm64`
Windows (x64)	`evpn-ninja-windows-amd64.exe`

# Linux/macOS: make executable and run
chmod +x evpn-ninja-*
./evpn-ninja-linux-amd64 --help

Shell Completion

# Bash
evpn-ninja completion bash > ~/.evpn-ninja-complete.bash
echo "source ~/.evpn-ninja-complete.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

# Zsh
evpn-ninja completion zsh > ~/.evpn-ninja-complete.zsh
echo "source ~/.evpn-ninja-complete.zsh" >> ~/.zshrc

# Fish
evpn-ninja completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/evpn-ninja.fish

🚀 Quick Start

# Show all available commands
evpn-ninja --help

# Use a preset for quick calculations
evpn-ninja --preset large-dc fabric

# Calculate MTU requirements
evpn-ninja mtu --payload 1500 --underlay ipv4

# Generate EVPN configs for multiple vendors
evpn-ninja evpn --as 65000 --loopback 10.0.0.1 --l2-vni 10010 --vendor arista --vendor cisco-nxos

# Export to Containerlab for testing
evpn-ninja export containerlab --spines 2 --leaves 4 --platform eos --output-dir ./lab

# Interactive guided mode
evpn-ninja interactive

📖 Commands

MTU Calculator

Calculate the required underlay MTU for VXLAN encapsulation with a detailed breakdown of each layer.

evpn-ninja mtu --payload 1500 --underlay ipv4 --outer-vlan 1

                              VXLAN MTU Breakdown
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Layer          ┃ Size (bytes) ┃ Description                                ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ Outer Ethernet │ 14           │ Dst MAC + Src MAC + EtherType              │
│ Outer VLAN     │ 4            │ 802.1Q tag                                 │
│ Outer IPv4     │ 20           │ Standard IPv4 header                       │
│ UDP            │ 8            │ Source port + Dest port (4789) + Length    │
│ VXLAN Header   │ 8            │ Flags + Reserved + VNI + Reserved          │
│ Inner Ethernet │ 14           │ Dst MAC + Src MAC + EtherType              │
│ Inner Payload  │ 1500         │ Original L3 packet (IP + data)             │
└────────────────┴──────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────┘

╭─────────────────────────────── Summary ────────────────────────────────╮
│   Required MTU        1554 bytes                                       │
│   Recommended MTU     1600 bytes                                       │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

VNI Allocation

Plan VNI assignments using multiple allocation schemes.

# VLAN-based scheme
evpn-ninja vni --scheme vlan-based --base-vni 10000 --start-vlan 100 --count 5

# Tenant-based scheme
evpn-ninja vni --scheme tenant-based --tenant-id 5 --start-vlan 100 --count 3

# Output as JSON for automation
evpn-ninja vni --scheme vlan-based --base-vni 10000 --count 10 --output json

Fabric Parameters

Generate complete IP addressing plans and resource estimates for leaf-spine fabrics.

evpn-ninja fabric --vteps 8 --spines 4 --vnis 500 --hosts 100 \
  --loopback-net 10.0.0.0/24 \
  --vtep-net 10.0.1.0/24 \
  --p2p-net 10.0.100.0/22

Features:

Router loopback allocation
VTEP (NVE) loopback allocation
P2P /31 link addressing
Resource estimates (MAC entries, EVPN routes, BGP sessions)
Automatic IP overlap and capacity validation

EVPN Parameters

Calculate RD/RT values and generate vendor-specific configurations.

# L2 VNI only
evpn-ninja evpn --as 65000 --loopback 10.0.0.1 --l2-vni 10010 --vlan 10 --vendor arista

# L2 + L3 VNI (symmetric IRB)
evpn-ninja evpn --as 65000 --loopback 10.0.0.1 \
  --l2-vni 10010 --vlan 10 \
  --l3-vni 50000 --vrf TENANT-A \
  --vendor arista --vendor cisco-nxos --vendor juniper

eBGP Underlay

Design RFC 7938 compliant eBGP underlay with automatic ASN allocation.

evpn-ninja ebgp --spines 4 --leaves 16 --scheme private-4byte --p2p-net 10.0.100.0/22

ASN Schemes:

private-2byte — 64512-65534
private-4byte — 4200000000+ (recommended)
custom — Specify base ASN

Multi-homing

Calculate EVPN multi-homing parameters including ESI generation.

evpn-ninja multihoming --es-count 4 --peers 2 --mode active-active --vendor arista

Features:

ESI Type-0, Type-1 (LACP), Type-3 (MAC-based)
LACP system ID configuration
DF election algorithm settings
Vendor configs for Arista, Cisco, Juniper

Route Reflector

Calculate BGP Route Reflector placement for EVPN overlay.

evpn-ninja rr --clients 16 --placement spine --redundancy pair

Bandwidth Calculator

Estimate fabric bandwidth and oversubscription ratios.

evpn-ninja bandwidth --leaves 8 --spines 4 \
  --uplinks 4 --uplink-speed 100g --downlinks 48 --downlink-speed 25g

🏭 Supported Vendors

EVPN Ninja generates production-ready configurations for 18 vendors:

Vendor	Platform	Vendor	Platform
Arista	EOS	Nokia	SR Linux
Cisco	NX-OS	Dell	OS10
Cisco	IOS-XE	Cumulus	Linux
Cisco	IOS-XR	SONiC	SONiC NOS
Juniper	Junos	Extreme	EXOS
Huawei	CE Series	HPE	Aruba CX
MikroTik	RouterOS 7	H3C	Comware
VyOS	VyOS 1.4+	ZTE	ZXROS
Fortinet	FortiOS	Mellanox	Onyx

# Generate config for specific vendor
evpn-ninja evpn --as 65000 --loopback 10.0.0.1 --l2-vni 10010 --vendor nokia-srlinux

# Generate for multiple vendors at once
evpn-ninja evpn --as 65000 --loopback 10.0.0.1 --l2-vni 10010 \
  --vendor arista --vendor cisco-nxos --vendor juniper

🧪 Lab Export

Export your fabric design directly to network simulators for testing.

Containerlab

evpn-ninja export containerlab \
  --spines 2 --leaves 4 \
  --platform eos \
  --lab-name my-fabric \
  --include-hosts \
  --output-dir ./containerlab

# Deploy the lab
cd containerlab && make deploy

EVE-NG

evpn-ninja export eve-ng \
  --spines 2 --leaves 4 \
  --platform nxos \
  --lab-name evpn-test \
  --output-dir ./eve-ng

GNS3

evpn-ninja export gns3 \
  --spines 2 --leaves 4 \
  --platform eos \
  --lab-name gns3-fabric \
  --output-dir ./gns3

Export All Formats

evpn-ninja export all --spines 2 --leaves 4 --output-dir ./automation

This creates:

automation/
├── ansible/
│   ├── inventory.yaml
│   └── group_vars/
├── nornir/
│   ├── inventory/
│   └── config.yaml
├── containerlab/
│   ├── my-fabric.clab.yml
│   ├── configs/
│   └── Makefile
├── eve-ng/
│   └── my-fabric.unl
└── gns3/
    └── my-fabric.gns3

⚙️ Configuration

Config File

Create a config file at ~/.evpn-ninja.yaml to set your defaults:

defaults:
  mtu:
    payload_size: 1500
    underlay_type: ipv4
  fabric:
    spine_count: 2
    vtep_count: 4
    loopback_network: "10.0.0.0/24"
    vtep_loopback_network: "10.0.1.0/24"
  evpn:
    bgp_as: 65000
    vendors:
      - arista
      - cisco-nxos

output:
  format: table
  no_color: false

presets:
  my-dc:
    fabric:
      spine_count: 4
      vtep_count: 32
      vni_count: 1000
    ebgp:
      scheme: private-4byte

# Initialize default config
evpn-ninja config init

# Show current config
evpn-ninja config show

# Use custom config file
evpn-ninja --config /path/to/config.yaml fabric

Built-in Presets

# List available presets
evpn-ninja --list-presets

# Use a preset
evpn-ninja --preset large-dc fabric
evpn-ninja --preset small-dc ebgp

Preset	Spines	Leaves	VNIs	Description
`small-dc`	2	4	100	Small datacenter
`medium-dc`	2	16	500	Medium datacenter
`large-dc`	4	64	4000	Large datacenter
`multi-tenant`	-	-	-	Multi-tenant with L3VNI per tenant
`campus`	2	8	50	Campus network

📤 Output Formats

All commands support multiple output formats:

# Pretty tables (default)
evpn-ninja fabric --vteps 4 --spines 2 --output table

# JSON for automation/scripting
evpn-ninja fabric --vteps 4 --spines 2 --output json

# YAML for config files
evpn-ninja fabric --vteps 4 --spines 2 --output yaml

# Save to file
evpn-ninja fabric --vteps 4 --spines 2 --output json --save fabric.json

🛠️ Development

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/ashimov/evpn-ninja.git
cd evpn-ninja

# Install with dev dependencies
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Run linter
ruff check src/

# Run formatter
ruff format src/

# Run type checker
mypy src/

# Run tests
pytest

# Run all checks
ruff check src/ && ruff format src/ && mypy src/ && pytest

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Fork the repository
Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
Open a Pull Request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

👤 Author

Berik Ashimov

Website: ashimov.com
GitHub: @ashimov

_{Built with ❤️ for the network engineering community}

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Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
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.github/workflows		.github/workflows
assets		assets
src/evpn_ninja		src/evpn_ninja
tests		tests
.gitignore		.gitignore
CHANGELOG.md		CHANGELOG.md
CONTRIBUTING.md		CONTRIBUTING.md
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
pyproject.toml		pyproject.toml
requirements-dev.txt		requirements-dev.txt
requirements.txt		requirements.txt
uv.lock		uv.lock

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