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.

Combo / shared ports¶

A combo group models a shared port with more than one physical connector - the classic RJ45 + SFP twin, or two management jacks where only one is ever live. Give each connector its own interface with the same combo group name (e.g. mgmt on mgmt0 and mgmt0-sfp). They're badged combo in the interface table, and Danbyte keeps them mutually exclusive: enabling one automatically disables the others in the group on that device, so only the active connector reads as up.

Set the combo group on interface templates too and it materialises onto every device of that type. It also plays with SNMP: when a drift sync adopts the observed admin state (the connector that's actually up), the group flips the twin off to match - no manual bookkeeping.

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). Virtual, Bridge and LAG always make the interface virtual: it leaves the faceplate and, by default, the port count.

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. A bare number is read as kbps - the convention scrapers and other DCIM tools use for a numeric speed - and is rewritten on save to the dropdown's form: 1000000 becomes 1G, 25000000 25G, 100000 100M, an odd value like 1234000 1.234G. Rows already stored that way are rewritten once by migration api.0154. Anything with a unit (10G, 1 Gbps) is kept exactly as typed.

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.

The single Add interface form takes a [a-b] range too (eth[0-3]), which is handier for a few ports since you get the full field set - type, MTU, PoE, VLANs, VRF, LAG - applied to all of them. The form is grouped into sections: device/name/type up top, then Switching (802.1Q, VLANs, VRF), State (status, uplink, enabled, mark connected, reserved), and collapsible Hardware, Nesting, and SNMP groups for the rarely touched fields - a group with values set opens automatically and summarises its values while collapsed. Your open/closed choices are remembered per browser, and Ctrl/Cmd+Enter saves from any field.

The State fields - Status and Uplink are selects side by side, the rest checkboxes:

Bulk add is the one to use for a whole switch face: it does the work server-side, keeps zero-padding, and skips existing names. See Adding many components at once.

Edit many at once¶

Tick the rows you want and a bar floats up from the bottom - Edit opens a dialog that applies your changes to every selected interface.

Each field starts on Keep current and is left untouched unless you change it, so you can retype one field across 48 ports without disturbing the rest. Uplink takes Automatic, Always or Never the same way; over the API (POST /api/interfaces/bulk-update/) setting is_uplink clears never_uplink and the other way round, and asking for both is refused. Choice-backed fields - type, 802.1Q mode, duplex - are searchable dropdowns listing the real values, grouped the same way as the single-interface form; each also offers a Clear row to blank the field. Free-text fields (speed, description) pair a checkbox with an input: tick the box to arm the field.

The same bar appears on the console, power, and port tabs, and on a device type's component templates.

What you see in the list¶

On the device's Interfaces tab, each row shows the name, type, enabled state, speed, VLAN, cable count, any IP addresses attached to it, and the description. Sub-interfaces are indented under their parent, and the LAG column ties a bundle together: members show their aggregate, the aggregate shows how many links it bundles. An aggregate is an interface of type LAG with its own Bundle settings (protocol, LACP mode, min links) - 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.

They sit with the cable controls (status, trace, connect, reserve) in a column at the end of the row. Only the edit pencil stays pinned to the table's right edge, so on a narrow window you scroll the table sideways to reach the rest while the interface names stay readable.

The interface detail page¶

Click an interface name to open its page. It shows the device, type, speed, MTU, VLAN, MAC, description, any parent/LAG/bridge relationships, the IPs assigned to it, and a cable trace.

On the Overview, the Switching card has an Uplink row: the interface's setting and, for Automatic, what the uplink rules decided - Automatic · yes, LLDP sw-core-01, Automatic · no, Always or Never.

The MACs tab¶

On a port of a device that reads a MAC table, the MACs tab (its count is the MACs there now) lists what the switch learned on the port: MAC, Vendor, VLAN, IP, Name, First seen, Last seen and State (Present or Gone; a present MAC whose switch has not finished a read for a day reads Stale). Present is the default; All adds the gone rows the tenant keeps for Forget MACs unseen for, which are the port's history - a MAC that moved away shows here as Gone. Long lists page 100 at a time.

On an uplink, a line above the table says why it is one - Uplink · LLDP neighbour sw-core-01 - and the table lists the MACs seen through the port, with a Location column: here, or where each one really sits (→ sw-core-01 · Eth1/5, with an uplink chip when even that is only the nearest uplink).

Refresh MACs (with change on the device) re-reads the device's whole MAC table - there is no per-port read, SNMP walks the whole table either way. The tab reads GET /api/monitoring/interfaces/<id>/macs/?state=present|all.

The IP addresses tab is the same IP table as the device's IPs tab, with only this interface's addresses: Address, Designation, Status, Monitoring, DHCP, Role, VLAN, Zone and Description by default, and Scope, DNS name, Switch, Switch port, Tags, Updated and the IP's other fields in the Columns menu. The tab keeps its own column layout, separate from the device tab's.

• Designation marks the device's primary (★ Primary), secondary (2^nd) and management (Mgmt) address. With permission to change the device, each row's … menu sets or clears these.
• Monitoring is the address's check status from the device's checks, so it shows - for a viewer who cannot see the device.
• + Add IP opens the IP form with the device and interface filled in; Save and Cancel come back to this tab. Assign IP attaches an existing address.

The tab count, the table and the Overview's IP addresses card list only the addresses you have permission to view.

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.