NQE Updates for 25.8.0

Released: 2025-08-19

We are happy to announce the following enhancements to NQE as part of release 25.8.0.

For more details, see the full Forward Enterprise NQE 25.8.0 release notes.

What’s New

New vendor and OS support — HUAWEI has been added as a recognized value for both Vendor and OS, while ALKIRA has been added as a Vendor and ALKIRA_CXP as a corresponding OS. These additions expand support for querying multi-vendor environments.

Improvements

GCP region visibility — The cloudRegions field in VpcData can now return values for Google Cloud Platform, improving accuracy for GCP environments.
 

IPv4 parsing flexibility — The ipAddress function now accepts IPv4 addresses with leading zeroes (for example, 01.1.1.1), providing broader input compatibility.

Command Changes

Expanded command coverage — New and updated commands improve device output coverage across multiple operating systems:

• Added ARUBA_AOS_CX commands, along with DEVICE_HARDWARE_INFO commands for a wider set of platforms.

• Updated BGP_PEERS and BGP_SUMMARY commands for Cisco IOS and IOS-XE, including support for IPv6 and VPNv6.

• Enhanced BGP_PEERS commands for Arista EOS and ASA with more complete IPv6 neighbor coverage.

• Added an ARP_TABLE command for NX-OS.

• Added INTERFACES_STATUS and PORT_CHANNEL_MEMBERS commands for Fortinet, moving these details out of the CONFIG command for clearer separation.

These updates expand command coverage and improve parsing consistency across vendors.

Deprecations

Several fields and functions are now deprecated and will be removed in a future major release:

• Fields: publicUnallocatedIps (CloudAccount), criteria, description, and severity (Cve), negotiatedPortSpeed (Ethernet), cliSources, httpSources, and snmpSources (ExternalSources), uptimeSeconds (System), and cloudType (VpcData).

• Functions: blockDiff_alpha1, blockMatches_alpha1, and hasBlockMatch_alpha1 are deprecated in favor of their stable counterparts without the _alpha1 suffix.