We outgrew the old-school network lab.
So we rebuilt it from scratch.
netplex. is designed and built in Australia by engineers who spent years living inside the network emulation tools of the past - and decided the experience around brilliant emulation deserved better.
Why we built it
An entire generation of engineers got certified on the tools that came before us - and we're grateful for them. But every session started the same way: SSH into a server, juggle image files, run fixpermissions, fight a UI that looked like it shipped in 2007, then open yet another external terminal just to type a command.
The emulation underneath was brilliant. The experience around it hadn't moved in a decade. That old, clunky style of tooling is exactly what drove me to build netplex. - so we started rebuilding the experience from the ground up: API-first, in the browser, with a canvas you actually want to look at, on top of the same proven open foundations (QEMU/KVM, Open vSwitch and friends).
It's taken a lot of sweat and late nights to get here, because this platform is meant to be live and working perfectly, not a weekend hobby project. I wanted people to actually enjoy using their network lab again - so I built netplex. to be the Swiss Army knife of network emulation: one tool, every device, every workflow.
This is only the start. There's a lot more on the roadmap I want to bring into netplex. - expect more features and more fixes as we keep hardening this into a solid system you can rely on.
What makes it different
It's not just the modern UI. Everything the UI does is a documented API call - and an MCP call too, so any AI agent you already use can drive a lab the same way you would, not just chat about it. Architect is a single seat with the complete automation toolbox - no cripple-ware. And our headline differentiator, the multi-host VXLAN stitch fabric (on the roadmap, in beta), spans a single topology across several cheap machines and cloud VMs - so big labs no longer need a big server.
netplex. isn't just for network engineers clicking around a canvas, either - it's built for network automation too. Every lab is an API and an event stream first, so the same platform that a CCIE drags-and-drops through is one a developer can drive entirely from Python, Ansible or CI - no GUI required.
The canvas is the product
Every other surface defers to it. Premium, flat, dark-first - built for engineers reading dense screens at 2am.
Open where it helps
Device kinds, CLI, SDKs, the API schema and docs are open. The moat is the fabric, the cloud and the community - not lock-in.
Never leave you stuck
Self-healing services and a grace window so a licence blip never kills a running lab. Reliability over DRM zeal.
The founder
Khaled Alghazi
Melbourne-based network & cloud engineer, 15+ years building critical infrastructure across government, enterprise and telco - network automation, cloud networking, and core routing and switching across every major vendor. netplex. is what happens when that experience finally runs out of patience for clunky old tooling.
The team
A small, focused Australian team spanning platform, frontend and backend. Every decision is made by people who use netplex. daily - not a marketing department.
Platform
QEMU/KVM, the scheduler, the image pipeline and the VXLAN stitch on the roadmap.
Frontend
The React canvas, integrated terminals, six themes and the design system you're looking at.
Backend
The orchestrator, node providers, the event stream and the automation API everything runs on.
We built the tool we wished existed.
Every shortcut in netplex. exists because a real annoyance came first.
Who it's for
Individuals and enterprises alike - the same product scales from a free single-user Associate tier to a university with SSO, classes, quotas, audit and a full education mode - with Education and Enterprise editions arriving after the individual release. Winning the next generation early matters more than squeezing them.
If you've ever tolerated the old tools because there was nothing better - this is for you.