NetBox: Network Source of Truth for IPAM and DCIM
NetBox is the source of truth for network infrastructure: what devices exist, where they are racked, how they are cabled, and which IP addresses and VLANs are in use.
Why self-host NetBox
Network documentation lives in spreadsheets until the spreadsheet is wrong, which is immediately. NetBox replaces it with a data model that understands the relationships between racks, devices, interfaces, prefixes, and circuits, and enforces them, so an IP cannot be assigned twice and a cable cannot terminate on a port that does not exist. Because everything is available through a REST and GraphQL API, it becomes the input to automation rather than a document nobody updates.
What it does
NetBox falls into the Networking category of self-hosted software. IPAM covers prefixes, IP addresses, VLANs, VRFs, and ASNs with hierarchy and availability tracking. DCIM covers sites, racks, device types, modules, power distribution, and full cable tracing between interfaces. Beyond that it models circuits and providers, virtualization clusters, tenancy, configuration contexts and rendering, journaling and change logging, and custom fields on any object. Ansible and Terraform integrations make it a common inventory source for network automation.
Community traction
NetBox has over 21k stars on GitHub and has become the de facto standard for network source of truth since its 2016 release, used by thousands of organizations including large service providers.
Deployment
It is a Django application backed by PostgreSQL and Redis. Docker Compose deployment is officially supported, and the project publishes detailed guidance for production installs behind a proper web server.
Alternatives
phpIPAM is a lighter, IPAM-only option. NetBox’s own commercial NetBox Cloud offers the same software hosted.
License
NetBox is released under the Apache License 2.0.
Links
NetBox is overkill for a flat home network and indispensable the moment you have VLANs, multiple sites, or automation reading your inventory.