Legal Disclaimers, Terms of Use & Third-Party Notices

Summary of Key Terms

Disclaimer: All training content, lab environments, configurations, and code are provided for educational purposes only, "as is," without warranty. Nothing here is validated for production use; test independently on your own physical hardware before any deployment. The Company is not liable for outages, defects, or losses resulting from use of this material. All third-party product names, trademarks, and open-source projects are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification only, without implied endorsement.

The summary above is provided for convenience and does not replace the full terms below. The full terms control.

1. About This Document

This document sets out the legal disclaimers, terms of use, acceptable use rules, privacy practices, and third-party notices that govern tek-brains.net. tek-brains.net and tek-racks.net are interconnected sister platforms operated by SRv6 TEK Innovations, LLC (together with its affiliates, the "Company", "we", or "us"). tek-brains.net provides the training guides and instructional material; tek-racks.net provides the hands-on, cloud-hosted lab environments. Because the two platforms work together as one learning experience, an identical copy of this document is published on both sites, and in this document "Platform" means both of them.

By creating an account, accessing any training material, or launching, using, exporting, or copying any lab, topology, configuration, script, or code from the Platform, you ("you" or the "User") agree to be bound by this entire document. If you do not agree, do not use the Platform. If you use the Platform on behalf of an employer or other organization, you represent that you are authorized to accept these terms on its behalf.

In this document, "Content" means all training guides, instructional text, diagrams, videos, NOS guides, and documentation; and "Lab Materials" means all lab environments, topologies, test cases, configurations, templates, designs, telemetry pipelines, automation playbooks, scripts, and code provided on or created with the Platform.

2. Educational Purpose & Accuracy Disclaimer

All Content and Lab Materials are provided for educational, informational, and pre-production simulation purposes only. The Content reflects the author's personal engineering experience, subject-matter expertise, and interpretation of industry standards and specifications, including standards the author has contributed to.

Although considerable care is taken in preparing the Content, networking technologies, standards, and vendor implementations change frequently, and interpretations of specifications can differ. The Content may contain technical inaccuracies, omissions, typographical errors, or information that is outdated or does not apply to your specific hardware, software release, or environment. Nothing on the Platform constitutes professional engineering, consulting, or design advice for your particular network, and no consulting or professional relationship is created by your use of the Platform.

Where the Content references RFCs, IETF drafts, IEEE standards, patents, or vendor documentation, the official published source is authoritative. Where the Content and an official standard or vendor document disagree, you should rely on the official source and verify behavior independently.

3. Production Deployment Warning & Physical Testing Requirement

Before deploying any configuration, design, command, test, script, playbook, or code learned, obtained, or derived from the Platform into any live, production, commercial, or customer-facing environment, you are solely responsible for:

• Performing your own independent, comprehensive testing and validation on the actual physical hardware, software releases, line cards, optics, and scale that you intend to deploy;
• Testing in an isolated staging or pre-production environment that is separated from live traffic;
• Following your organization's change-management, peer-review, maintenance-window, and rollback procedures; and
• Confirming vendor support, software compatibility, licensing, and known-defect (bug) status with the relevant vendor.

Any use of Content or Lab Materials in a production environment is done entirely at your own risk. Successful behavior in a lab on the Platform does not mean the same configuration, design, or code will behave the same way on physical hardware, at production scale, or alongside other features and traffic in your network.

4. Disclaimer of Warranties

Without limiting the above, the Company does not warrant that any design, topology, configuration, test, telemetry pipeline, automation workflow, or code is safe, stable, correct, secure, or compatible with any live environment, hardware platform, or software release.

THE PLATFORM IS NOT A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT, AND NO CONTENT OR LAB MATERIALS ARE CERTIFIED, VALIDATED, OR WARRANTED FOR USE IN ANY LIVE OR PRODUCTION NETWORK.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE PLATFORM, ALL CONTENT, AND ALL LAB MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR THAT THE PLATFORM WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE.

5. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COMPANY, ITS OWNERS, MEMBERS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS, INSTRUCTORS, AUTHORS, AFFILIATES, OR LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, OR BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE PLATFORM, THE CONTENT, OR THE LAB MATERIALS, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY, OR ANY OTHER THEORY, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

This limitation expressly includes, without limitation, any loss or damage arising from:

• Network, system, or service outages, degradation, or disruptions of any kind;
• Routing loops, black-holed traffic, control-plane or data-plane failures, convergence events, or controller cluster failures;
• Software or firmware defects (bugs) that are uncovered, triggered, or exposed by a configuration, design, test, or script;
• Data loss or corruption, security vulnerabilities, or security incidents;
• Hardware damage, performance degradation, or resource exhaustion;
• Errors or unintended actions caused by automation, orchestration, or scripts; and
• Financial loss, lost profits, service-level penalties, business interruption, or third-party claims.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain warranties or damages. In those jurisdictions, the exclusions and limitations above apply to the fullest extent permitted by law.

6. Assumption of Risk & Indemnification

You acknowledge that network engineering, automation, and software development involve inherent risk, and you voluntarily assume all risks associated with applying anything learned or obtained from the Platform.

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Company and its owners, members, officers, employees, contractors, instructors, authors, and affiliates from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to: (a) your use of the Platform; (b) your deployment of any Content or Lab Materials into any environment; (c) your use of any third-party software or images without valid licenses; or (d) your violation of this document or of any law or third-party right.

7. Lab Environment Fidelity & Virtualization Disclaimer

Lab environments on the Platform are built with open-source orchestration and virtualization tools, including Containerlab, vrnetlab, QEMU/KVM, and Docker, running virtual or containerized network operating systems. These environments are simulations. They do not reproduce the exact behavior, scale, timing, forwarding hardware (ASIC/NPU), buffering, optics, or feature set of physical platforms.

• Virtual and containerized images frequently have feature gaps, different default behaviors, and performance characteristics that differ from their hardware counterparts.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE COMPANY'S TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE PLATFORM SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID TO THE COMPANY FOR ACCESS TO THE PLATFORM DURING THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS (US $100).

• Virtualization anomalies, timing issues, and container or hypervisor limitations may affect lab results.
• Software defects found within a vendor's image are the responsibility of that vendor and should be reported to the vendor under your own support entitlement.

8. Third-Party Vendor Software, Images & Licensing (BYOL)

The Platform provides an orchestration and lab environment. The Company does not own, and claims no ownership of, credit for, or rights in, any proprietary network operating system or vendor software used in or referenced by the Platform. All such software, images, binaries, code, features, documentation, and associated logos are the exclusive property of their respective vendors.

Proprietary vendor images that may be used in Platform labs include, without limitation, Cisco XRd, Juniper cRPD and vJunos/cJunos Evolved, Nokia SR Linux, Arista cEOS/vEOS, Ciena, IP Infusion OcNOS, Arrcus ArcOS, and NVIDIA Cumulus Linux. Open-source network operating systems such as FRR and SONiC are addressed in Section 10.

• Bring Your Own License (BYOL). You are solely responsible for obtaining and maintaining valid licenses, entitlements, evaluation agreements, or other rights directly from each vendor for any proprietary image you run, and for complying with each vendor's end-user license agreement (EULA) and usage terms.
• No unlicensed distribution. The Company does not sell, sublicense, or distribute proprietary vendor software. Where a vendor image is made available in a lab, it is made available only as permitted by that vendor's terms or under the User's own license.
• Container wrapping. Use of vrnetlab, QEMU, or Docker to package or run an image does not change or relax the vendor's license terms for that image.

9. Trademark Notices & Non-Endorsement

All product names, company names, logos, brands, and network operating system designations mentioned on the Platform are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. They are used for identification, educational, comparative, and instructional purposes only. Their use does not imply any affiliation with, sponsorship by, or endorsement by those owners. Unless and until expressly stated under a formal, executed partner agreement, the Platform is an independent educational service.

Network, Systems & Silicon Vendors Owner Marks referenced (illustrative, not exhaustive)

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Cisco, IOS, IOS XE, IOS XR, NX-OS, XRd Juniper Networks, Inc. (a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company)

Juniper, Junos, Junos OS Evolved, cRPD, vJunos Nokia Corporation Nokia, SR Linux, SR OS Arista Networks, Inc.

Arista, EOS, cEOS, vEOS Ciena Corporation Ciena, SAOS, Blue Planet Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

Huawei, VRP IP Infusion Inc. (an ACCESS CO., LTD. company)

IP Infusion, OcNOS Arrcus, Inc.

Arrcus, ArcOS NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA, Mellanox, Onyx, Cumulus Linux, Cumulus NetQ Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), OpenShift, Ansible Cloud Infrastructure Providers Owner Marks referenced (illustrative, not exhaustive)

Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates Amazon Web Services, AWS, Amazon EC2, Amazon VPC Microsoft Corporation Microsoft, Azure, Azure ExpressRoute Google LLC Google Cloud, Google Cloud Interconnect Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates Oracle, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)

Open-Source Foundations & Projects

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Kubernetes, SONiC, and OpenDaylight are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. ONOS is a trademark of its respective owner (originally the Open Networking Foundation). OpenStack is a trademark of the OpenInfra Foundation. Docker is a trademark of Docker, Inc. Python is a trademark of the Python Software Foundation. Rust is a trademark of the Rust Foundation. Go is a trademark of Google LLC. Grafana is a trademark of Grafana Labs. Prometheus is a trademark of The Linux Foundation. InfluxDB and Telegraf are trademarks of InfluxData, Inc. NetBox is a trademark of NetBox Labs, Inc. All other project names and logos belong to their respective owners.

The Platform does not display vendor logos except where permitted by the owner's brand guidelines or a partner agreement.

10. Open-Source Software Acknowledgments & Licenses

The Platform's lab orchestration, telemetry, automation, SDN, compute, and software-engineering environments are built on outstanding open-source software. We gratefully acknowledge and thank the authors, maintainers, contributors, and foundations behind each of the projects below. The Company claims no ownership, copyright, or exclusive rights in any of these projects, their code, or their branding.

* License identifications are provided for convenience and reflect commonly distributed versions. The authoritative license for any component is the license file distributed with the specific version in use, which governs over this table.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Red Hat OpenShift are commercial products of Red Hat, Inc. built on upstream open-source projects (including OKD and Kubernetes); their use is subject to Red Hat's subscription terms. References to them on the Platform are instructional only.

• Your use of each component through the Platform is subject to that component's own license. Nothing in this document limits any rights granted to you by an open-source license.
• Original copyright notices, license texts, and disclaimers of these projects are preserved. Full license texts are available on the Platform's Open Source Licenses page, and within each project's official distribution.
• Each project's own "as is" warranty disclaimer and limitation of liability applies. Neither the authors of these projects nor the Company are liable for any claim arising from the use of that software, to the extent provided in the applicable license and in this document.

11. Telemetry, Automation & SDN Controller Disclaimer

Model-Driven Telemetry Pipelines

Telemetry pipelines on the Platform (for example gNMIc, Telegraf, InfluxDB, Prometheus, and Grafana) are provided for learning and visualization of route and traffic generation. The Company makes no warranty regarding the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or rendering of collected data, queries, or dashboards. Community or pre-built dashboards are provided as-is.

Infrastructure as Code & Automation

Automation tools and scripts (for example Jinja2 templates, Ansible playbooks, Nornir, NetBox integrations, and Python scripts using Netmiko, Paramiko, or Scrapli) can push changes to many devices at once. A single error can cause widespread misconfiguration. You are solely responsible for reviewing, testing, and safeguarding any automation before running it against any real device, and the Company is not liable for configuration errors, loops, or unintended actions caused by automation executed within, or exported from, the Platform.

SDN Controllers (ONOS & OpenDaylight)

SDN controllers hold centralized authority over control-plane and flow state, and controller-level errors can have cascading effects. The Company makes no warranty regarding the stability of OpenFlow, P4Runtime, NETCONF/YANG, RESTCONF, or other southbound or northbound implementations, and is not responsible for flow deletions, cluster desynchronization, split-brain conditions, unpatched vulnerabilities (CVEs), or other defects inherent to upstream controller code, whether they occur in a lab or after export to another environment.

12. Software & Database Engineering Environments

Hands-on software and database engineering environments (including Python, Go, Rust, and C/C++ via GCC/G++) are provided for learning and practice. The Company is not responsible for the behavior of code you write, compile, or run, including infinite loops, memory leaks, runaway processes, or data loss, nor for the behavior or stability of that code when used outside the Platform.

The Company makes no guarantee of database performance, data persistence, backups, or query optimization for schemas or databases created in the lab. Treat all lab data as temporary; lab environments may be reset or deleted at any time.

13. Original Content, Copyright & Standards References

Unless otherwise noted, all instructional Content, architectural diagrams, lab guides, and technical explanations on the Platform, including the multi-vendor NOS guides, are original works of the author, derived from decades of industry experience in network, software, and hardware engineering and from the author's own standards and patent work. References to RFCs, IETF drafts, IEEE standards, patents, and official project or vendor documentation are provided as links so learners can consult the authoritative source.

© 2026 SRv6 TEK Innovations, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of the Content may be copied, reproduced, scraped, republished, distributed, transmitted, sold, or used to create derivative works or training data sets, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission from the Company.

14. Terms of Use & License Grant

• License. Subject to these terms and any applicable subscription, the Company grants you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Content and Lab Materials for your own educational purposes.
• Restrictions. You may not share account credentials, resell or sublicense access, scrape or bulk-download Content, reverse-engineer the Platform, or remove any copyright, trademark, or license notice.
• Account security. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for all activity under your account.
• Changes and termination. The Company may modify, suspend, or discontinue any part of the Platform, update Content, or suspend or terminate access for violation of this document, at any time.
• Acceptance record. The Platform records the date and time at which you accept this document.

15. Acceptable Use Policy

Lab environments must be used solely for lawful educational network and software engineering practice. You must not use the Platform, or any lab, container, interface, or outbound connectivity it provides, to:

• Launch or facilitate denial-of-service traffic, port or vulnerability scanning, brute-force attempts, packet interception, or any unauthorized testing against external targets or against the Platform's own infrastructure;
• Mine cryptocurrency, run distributed-computing workloads, or host unrelated applications or services;
• Create, store, or distribute malware, ransomware, or other malicious code;
• Store or transmit illegal content, pirated software, or material that infringes the rights of others, including unlicensed vendor images;
• Attempt to escape container or namespace isolation, escalate privileges on host systems, or access another User's lab, traffic, or data; or
• Violate any applicable law or regulation.

The Company may monitor resource consumption and process activity to protect the Platform, may immediately terminate any lab or session showing abnormal behavior, and may cooperate with law enforcement and network providers. Violations may result in immediate suspension or termination of your account without refund, to the extent permitted by law.

16. Fair Use & Resource Allocation

Running virtualized network operating systems, telemetry stacks, and SDN controllers requires significant shared compute. To keep the Platform stable for everyone:

• Labs may be subject to CPU, memory, storage, node-count, and session-time limits based on your access tier.
• Labs with no console or API activity for a defined idle period may be automatically shut down and removed.
• Leaving large topologies running idle, or otherwise hoarding resources, may result in labs being stopped without notice.

17. Technical Support Scope & No Service Levels

Support covers the Platform itself: account access, login, billing, dashboard defects, and failures of the Platform's orchestration layer to start a lab. Support does not include design, troubleshooting, or debugging of your lab work, including routing protocols (for example BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, EVPN, SRv6), SDN controller behavior, vendor image defects, automation playbooks, or code. Vendor image defects must be raised with the vendor under your own support entitlement.

Unless expressly stated in a separate written agreement, the Platform is provided without any uptime, availability, or performance service level agreement (SLA). Lab nodes that fail due to software errors or misconfiguration may need to be restarted or rebuilt by the User.

18. Early Access Notice

During any early-access or beta period, features, layouts, resource limits, and lab catalogs may change without notice; maintenance may occur without advance warning; and you may experience latency, container timeouts, or other transient disruptions. Feedback submitted through the Platform's support or bug-reporting channels may be used to improve the Platform without obligation to you.

19. Privacy, Cookies & Cross-Platform Data Sharing

Information We Collect

• Account information: name, email address, and credentials (stored in encrypted or hashed form).
• Usage and lab metadata: training progress, lab types and sizes, node types, and runtime metrics used to operate and improve the Platform.
• Payment information: processed by third-party payment processors. The Company does not store full payment card numbers.

Cookies

The Platform uses essential cookies to maintain secure sessions and remember workspace state. The Company does not sell personal information and does not use cross-site tracking cookies for third-party advertising.

Data Shared Between tek-brains.net and tek-racks.net

To display training material alongside a live lab, the two platforms exchange limited operational data over encrypted (TLS) connections: session identifiers, training-module and lab-topology identifiers, progress and lab-state markers, and the resources needed to start a lab. Payment data is not exchanged between the platforms.

Your Responsibility for Secrets

Labs run on shared infrastructure and may be reset or deleted at any time. Do not place production credentials, private SSH keys, customer data, or other sensitive information into lab devices, scripts, variables, or databases.

Questions about privacy, or requests to access or delete your account information, can be submitted through the contact page on either platform.

20. General Terms

• Governing law. This document is governed by the laws of the State of Maryland, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute shall be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Maryland, and you consent to their jurisdiction.
• Severability. If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable, it shall be enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect.
• No waiver. Failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of the right to enforce it later.
• Survival. Sections 2 through 13 survive any termination of your account or access.
• Updates. The Company may update this document at any time by posting a revised version with a new effective date. Continued use of the Platform after an update constitutes acceptance.
• Entire agreement. This document, together with any separate written subscription or enterprise agreement, is the entire agreement between you and the Company regarding the Platform. If there is a conflict, the separate signed agreement controls.
• Mirrored publication. Identical copies of this document are published on tek-brains.net and tek-racks.net; acceptance on either platform constitutes acceptance for both.

Acceptance

[ ] I have read and agree to the Legal Disclaimers, Terms of Use, Acceptable Use Policy, and Privacy terms of tek-brains.net and tek-racks.net.

© 2026 SRv6 TEK Innovations, LLC. All rights reserved. tek-brains.net and tek-racks.net are sister platforms of SRv6 TEK Innovations, LLC.

BY CHECKING THE ACCEPTANCE BOX AND CREATING AN ACCOUNT, OR BY CLICKING "LAUNCH LAB," YOU CONFIRM THAT YOU HAVE READ, UNDERSTOOD, AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THIS ENTIRE DOCUMENT, INCLUDING THE DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES, LIMITATION OF LIABILITY, INDEMNIFICATION, PRODUCTION DEPLOYMENT WARNING, AND ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY.