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Synthetic Devices

The Forward Platform provides the ability to define and add some network concepts and capabilities using user-defined synthetic devices.

These include:

  • Internet Node - An Internet node allows users to trace paths between different sites connected via the public internet, or a third-party IP infrastructure.
  • Intranet Node - An Intranet node models more generic connections than an L3 VPN or an Internet node. It can represent a leased connection like a WAN (Wide Area Network) circuit, except that it operates at Layer 3 instead of Layer 2. An Intranet node models something like L3 hub-and-spoke connections, where the Intranet node is the hub.
  • L2 VPN - An L2 VPN is an extension of a L2 broadcast domain over the WAN. Therefore, the Forward L2 VPN emulates a distributed virtual bridge that brings all access circuits into a single broadcast domain.
  • L3 VPN - Also called “L3 transports”. An L3 VPN models a set of point-to-point L3 connections that the Forward Platform infers from BGP. Devices connected to a L3 VPN are called customer edge (CE) devices. For each CE device, Forward examines the subnets it advertises over BGP to other CE devices. If another CE device receives that BGP route and installs it in its RIB, we model a route across the L3 VPN between those two CEs.
  • WAN Circuit - A WAN Circuit models point-to-point L2 connections. It is essentially a bridge that allows each side of the connection to have different VLANs.
  • Encryptor - An Encryptor models a devices that encapsulates traffic in an IPSEC tunnel.
  • Missing Peer The Missing Peer acts as a synthetic device designed to model traffic ignored by other synthetic devices.

To add or edit a synthetic device, navigate to the Sources page, and select the Synthetic devices tab.

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Creation of or changes applied to a synthetic device will be applied to the next collected snapshot.