Interfaces¶

Interfaces are the ports on a device. They're where you attach IP addresses and terminate cables. Each interface belongs to exactly one device, and its name must be unique on that device.

You'll usually manage interfaces from a device's Interfaces tab, but they also have their own list and detail pages.

Physical extras¶

Interfaces carry the bread-and-butter switch fields: management only (out-of-band — badged mgmt in the device's interface table), duplex (half/full/auto), PoE mode + type (PD/PSE, 802.3af→bt and passive variants), and WWN for Fibre Channel. Interface templates carry mgmt-only and PoE too, so they stamp onto new devices — and the devicetype-library importer maps poe_mode/poe_type from library files.

Add an interface¶

From a device's Interfaces tab, click Add interface, then fill in:

Interface type¶

The Type dropdown is a searchable list of standard media types, organised into sub-categories:

• Ethernet by speed — Fast Ethernet through 800G and 1.6T, including media-specific optics (10gbase-lr, 100gbase-dr, BiDi variants)
• Pluggable transceivers — SFP, SFP+, SFP28, QSFP+, QSFP28, QSFP-DD, OSFP, … (the cage, when the medium depends on the inserted optic)
• Backplane Ethernet, Wireless, Cellular, SONET/SDH, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, Serial/WAN, Broadband, PON, Stacking
• Virtual — for logical ports (see Virtual interfaces)

Start typing (e.g. sfp28, 10gbase-lr, qsfp) to filter across all groups. Type is optional — leave it blank if you don't care to record it. The full taxonomy, and when to pick a fixed-media slug vs a transceiver slug: Interface & cable types.

Speed¶

Speed is a free-text field with a dropdown of common values (10M … 800G) so you can pick quickly or type your own.

Add many interfaces at once¶

Switches have a lot of ports. From the Interfaces tab, click Bulk add to create a whole range in one go. Enter a pattern with a numeric range in brackets and watch the live preview:

Names that already exist on the device are skipped, so re-running is safe.

What you see in the list¶

On the device's Interfaces tab, each row shows the name, type, enabled state, speed, VLAN, cable count, and any IP addresses attached to it. Sub-interfaces are indented under their parent, and aggregate members show their LAG — see Virtual & aggregate interfaces.

Attaching IP addresses¶

Two buttons on each interface row — + Add IP and Assign IP — let you put an address on the port without leaving the page. See Assigning IP addresses.

The interface detail page¶

Click an interface name to open its page. It shows the device, type, speed, MTU, VLAN, MAC, any parent/LAG/bridge relationships, the IPs assigned to it, and a cable trace. From here you can also add or assign IPs.

VM interfaces¶

Virtual machines have interfaces too — managed from a VM's Interfaces tab — and they carry the same L2/L3 context as device ports:

So a VLAN-trunked or VRF-scoped VM NIC is modelled exactly like a physical one (and imports from NetBox without data loss). VM interfaces don't cable or nest — no type, LAG, parent, or bridge.