IXP Digital Twin Dashboard

A web-based dashboard for monitoring and managing IXP Digital Twin emulations. This tool provides customers and operators with a user-friendly interface to configure quarantine checks and validate configurations before deploying to production networks.

Overview

This dashboard is part of the ixp-digital-twin ecosystem. The IXP Digital Twin is a tool that generates emulation-based digital twins of Internet Exchange Points from production network configurations, using Kathará to create a network scenario where route-servers expose the same information as real-world ones.

Tutorial

A comprehensive tutorial is available in the wiki, explaining how to configure the digital twin, its management dashboard, and the quarantine dashboard.

About IXP Digital Twin

The ixp-digital-twin tool analyzes production configuration files and generates a Kathará network scenario with:

• Route servers based on production software versions (BIRD, OpenBGPD)
• Peer emulation using FRRouting routers injecting real routes with correct origin AS and AS-path
• Support for real device attachment via Kathará external feature

Use Cases

• Test Environment: Validate configurations before applying in production
• Staff Training: Risk-free environment for network operations training
• Customer Onboarding: Safe configuration validation before production connection

Quarantine Checks

The dashboard allows you to enable specific quarantine checks for your deployment. For dedicated quarantine check execution, see the IXP Quarantine Dashboard.

Prerequisites

To deploy and use the IXP Digital Twin Dashboard, ensure you have the following:

• Docker: For containerized deployment
• IXP Digital Twin: The ixp-digital-twin repository installed and configured

Installation

Initialize the Digital Twin

Clone the IXP Digital Twin repository to initialize your environment.

Assuming a root folder called digital-twin, run:

git clone git@github.com:KatharaFramework/ixp-digital-twin.git

Install the Dashboard

In the digital-twin direcory, clone the dashboard repository:

git clone git@github.com:KatharaFramework/ixp-digital-twin-dashboard.git

Run Development Environment

To run the dashboard:

docker compose -f docker-compose-dev.yml up --build

Note: Use the --build flag only on the first run.

Run Production Environment

Create a docker-compose.yml file from the docker-compose-prod.yml template, properly setting the environment variables in the environment section.

To run the dashboard:

bash run_prod.sh

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Emanuele Gigli (@supLeleh) and Gabriele Bianchi (@gabrielebnc), as this project is based on their prototypes.