So here is something that can very well take some time to come around the corner, but be here just like that and impact all of us. The new Cisco IOS (15.0) licensing methods are potentially putting our educational ability to study using GNS3/Dynamips at risk of coming to an end.

Here is a read from an article published by Dan Hughes on etherealmind.com

However this week marked the beginning of the end for this old friend, with the announcement of the supported hardware platforms for IOS 15.1, we see that only ISR and ISR2 routers are supported. For architectural reasons, it’s never been possible to emulate these platforms in dynamips, so we’ve reached a place where new IOS software won’t be usable in dynamips. We can run 12.4 on the existing range of platforms, and 15.0 on the 7200 platform, and thats it.

Today, it doesn’t really affect anything, unless you want to try the new hold music feature in 15.1, but over the months, as we head into 15.2 and 15.3, then the software we can run in dynamips will become too old to matter any more. Exam blueprints will move on, features we want to use will only exist in the new versions, we’ll update our production and test networks, and slowly, dynamips will become a thing of the past.

For those of us who have invested heavily in our own training and lab equipment, it won’t make a huge difference. Adding a few second hand 1841′s won’t cost a fortune, although will use a lot more power and cooling than the single dynamips box does. But for the ordinary CCNA and CCNP student, it’ll be too much to buy, too much room taken up, and too much power and noise. They can use remote labs, but they really don’t give the flexibility of your own kit.

So Greg Ferro put up a petetion off of an idea Wendel Odom came up with regarding an educational copy of IOS.

Do us all a favor and lets give it a shot and support and sign this electronic petition!

Ask Cisco to Consider an IOS for Certifcation Self Study - Sign the petition now!

Tags: Etherealmind, IOS 15.0