BLOG | Sep 16, 2025

Automate Network Intelligence with the Forward Networks API

Today’s infrastructure demands real-time awareness and rapid action. The Forward Networks API gives your network and security teams full programmatic access to snapshots, config data, policy violations, and topology views—so you can automate workflows, trigger external alerts, and drive decisions with real network truth.

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Arica Beckstead Customer Success Engineer

Who should read this post?

Network and security teams looking to automate monitoring and issue response processes
Teams working to integrate multiple tools to support network infrastructure
Users who need complete, flexible access to Forward’s platform data

What is covered in this content?

What the Forward Networks API enables
Key use cases for integration and automation
Sample Python scripts and endpoints
Links to API documentation and community resources

Why the API Matters

The Forward Networks platform creates a complete digital twin of your network—but the power of that data multiplies when it’s accessible via API. Whether you’re pushing insights into dashboards, validating changes before rollout, or automating ticket generation, the API puts your network state into your workflows.

Business Value

Accelerated Incident Response – Trigger downstream workflows instantly when drift, outage, or violation is detected
Improved Tooling Integration – Connect Forward data to systems like ServiceNow, Splunk, Grafana, or CI/CD pipelines
Customization at Scale – Build organization-specific workflows to monitor, visualize, or export what matters to your team
Consistency & Accuracy – Eliminate manual collection by automating access to accurate, real-time snapshots and topology data

How It Works

The Forward Networks API is a RESTful interface that allows secure, authenticated access to data such as:

Snapshots – pull current or historical states of your network
Diffs – automatically compare snapshots to detect drift
Devices & Topology – access physical and logical connectivity
NQE Results – run and retrieve Network Query Engine outputs
Policy Violations – query for violations and compliance failures

You authenticate using a token and issue standard HTTP requests to retrieve structured JSON data.

Technical Example

This Python example retrieves a list of devices from your Forward instance:

python

import http.client

conn = http.client.HTTPSConnection("fwd.app")

headersList = {
 "Accept": "*/*",
 "User-Agent": "Thunder Client (https://www.thunderclient.com)",
 "Authorization": "Basic **redacted**" 
}

payload = ""

conn.request("GET", "/api/networks/12346/devices?skip=0", payload, headersList)
response = conn.getresponse()
result = response.read()

print(result.decode("utf-8"))

View this script and more instructions on the community. You can integrate similar requests into Jenkins pipelines, custom dashboards, security reports, or alerting logic.

Getting Started

Get your API token from the Forward UI under the API access settings
Review the API reference at the provided developer documentation
Use Postman or curl to test your first requests
Build your integration into your monitoring stack, ticketing system, or script library
Join the Forward Community to share use cases and get help

Explore the Community Guide

The community post walks through core endpoints, authentication methods, and real-world examples. Start here for inspiration: Introduction to the Forward Networks API

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