--- title: How Many Lab Devices Can netlab Handle? « ipSpace.net blog description: netlab, a network lab orchestration tool, previously broke when lab topologies exceeded 250 devices. After fixing that limit, performance issues emerged due to... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-lab-devices-can-netlab-handle-ipspace-net-blog-yczfj995b twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How Many Lab Devices Can netlab Handle? « ipSpace.net blog | daily.dev og:description: netlab, a network lab orchestration tool, previously broke when lab topologies exceeded 250 devices. After fixing that limit, performance issues emerged due to... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-lab-devices-can-netlab-handle-ipspace-net-blog-yczfj995b og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/YCZfj995b.png og:image:alt: How Many Lab Devices Can netlab Handle? « ipSpace.net blog og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How Many Lab Devices Can netlab Handle? « ipSpace.net blog **[ipSpace.net Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/ipspace)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary netlab, a network lab orchestration tool, previously broke when lab topologies exceeded 250 devices. After fixing that limit, performance issues emerged due to O(n²) code complexity and slow YAML snapshot parsing (15 seconds for a 400-device lab). Switching the snapshot format from YAML to Python pickle reduced read time from over 5 seconds to under 0.5 seconds. A community member has successfully run a lab with over 3000 FRR containers. Release 25.09 will ship these fixes, making RAM and CPU the only practical limits for lab size. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why does netlab take so long to run commands like 'netlab connect' after starting a large lab? The slowness comes from parsing the netlab snapshot file, which is stored in YAML format. For a 400-device lab, parsing this file takes around 15 seconds. Switching the snapshot encoding from YAML to Python pickle reduces the read time from over 5 seconds to under 0.5 seconds, making post-start commands like 'netlab connect' nearly instant. _Network engineers scaling up virtual labs track fixes like this on daily.dev before committing to a topology size._ ### What is the maximum number of devices netlab can handle in a lab topology? netlab can handle over 3000 devices — a community member has run a lab with more than 3000 FRR containers. After release 25.09, the practical limit is determined solely by available RAM and CPU on the host server, not by netlab itself. Earlier versions broke at 250 devices due to a now-fixed bug. _Developers building large-scale network labs find relevant netlab updates and workarounds on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Compress netlab Lab Topologies with Dot Notation « ipSpace.net blog](https://daily.dev/posts/compress-netlab-lab-topologies-with-dot-notation-ipspace-net-blog-johomwxka) · ipSpace.net Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#python](https://daily.dev/tags/python), [#performance](https://daily.dev/tags/performance), [#networking](https://daily.dev/tags/networking) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-lab-devices-can-netlab-handle-ipspace-net-blog-yczfj995b) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How Many Lab Devices Can netlab Handle? « ipSpace.net blog","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-lab-devices-can-netlab-handle-ipspace-net-blog-yczfj995b","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-many-lab-devices-can-netlab-handle-ipspace-net-blog-yczfj995b"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:56:00.118Z","dateModified":"2026-08-24T06:52:53.375Z","description":"netlab, a network lab orchestration tool, previously broke when lab topologies exceeded 250 devices. 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