GNS3 Labs :: Cisco Router Simulator Network Topologies

WordpressMobile Plugin - Visit GNS3-Labs From Your Mobile Device

LBSources — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:44:40 -0600

While there may not be much benefit from actually making use of the site from your mobile device, its still nice to be able to look at it in an acceptable format to see new posts, comments, etc.

I was looking around for some sort of plugin because I’m always trying to respond to comments and questions while on the road. But the FULL blown website in a Windows Mobile PDA - just isn’t sexy

Commenting seems to be the only annoyance due to the fact that I don’t see a way to remain logged in and comment. You have to fill in your name, email and website if you would like to comment in several posts - not a deal breaker though.

You can take a look at it just by visiting the site within your Mobile PDA (blackberry, iphone, etc) and the plugin should detect a mobile device and reformat the view passed to your phone. It would be great if some of you confirm working and not working devices

Hope someone finds it useful!

Screenshots from my Motorola Q

GNS3-Topology: CCNA & CCNP Full Mesh Topology Template

LBSources — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:26:29 -0600

Chris sent me a lab which he says has helped him to work on about 95% of his CCNA and CCNP lab requirements. I think this is a clear sign that using Dynamips or GNS3 can be effective in a big way with exam preperation. That 5% left over can be achieved in a few ways - rack space, friends with labs or purchasing switches on ebay and link them into the virtual topology using real interfaces. Nevertheless Its great to see how much we can do without cash, space or budget (electricity bill) to prepare ourselves for these exams.

This lab is just a template lab and has no configs, routing protocols or scenarios to it. I’ll let Chris explain

I created one simple topology that seems to handle 95% of my CCNA & CCNP lab requirements. It isn’t fancy, but it should save people an hour+ of labor (that is how long it took me to create this topology).

I was getting tired of making one lab per exercise in the Cisco Lab Portfolios and the Certification Zone lab exercises. So I whipped up a 6 router setup that could handle the majority of the router scenarios I am using for practice.

It consists of 6 7206 routers in a full mesh topology. Each router has 2 ethernet connections to a dynamips ’switch’, one each in VLAN1 and VLAN2.

Each router has at least 4 frame connections to the other routers in the topology.

Each router also has 1 frame connection to a frame relay switch, with full mesh DLCI between all routers.

I use dynagen, not GNS3. I created a diagram of the topology using the freeware tool called Network Notepad (http://www.networknotepad.com/) so I can keep track of all the different connections.

Some of the CCNA & CCNP stuff calls for using the Cisco SDM. I created one generic_startup.txt config file. It sets the password to cisco for the router, and enables the http server. It also sets the exec-timeout on con0 to infinite, and disables domain lookup (your pings will work quickly now). All you have to do is bridge GNS3 or Dynagen to your physical network card, and you can use the Cisco SDM to interface with the routers. Or SecureACS, the VPN client, VMWare images, etc….

Warning: this topo uses a lot of RAM. When I have all 6 routers running, my memory utilization jumps from 900mb to 3.5GB. When all 6 routers are idle, I am seeing 10-15% CPU utilization - I have an Intel Core2 Quad processor.

Routers Used: 7206

IOS: c7200-advipservicesk9-mz.124-2.T

Image:

Feature of Topology: Full Mesh Ethernet, Frame Relay

Download: GNS3-Labs:: CCNA-CCNP-Full.Mesh.Topology-Chris

Thanks Chris!

Enjoy..

LBS

GNS3 Topology: BSCI - EIGRP & ISIS Redistribution Lab

LBSources — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:56:56 -0600

On November 15th I posted a lab contributed:BSCI OSPF Excercise Sim Question From Jim Shank. The lab was a great excercise where Jim pitched a scenario and requirement and the solution. Great lab! Jim sent me a new lab to share which is even better and has often proven to be a challenge for many. The labs is based on EIGRP & ISIS Redistribution of routes. Great practice for the CCNP seeker!

Orgrimmar Auction House has recently established a connection to the Thunderbluff Auction House to

share auction data. The two auction houses have been using separate routing protocols on their

networks, and a solution is required for the two Kalimdor clearing houses to begin sharing data

before the Alliance raid. A boundary router, Crossroads, has been setup to perform mutual

redistribution of route information between the two networks. For the Horde, you must configure

route redistribution from EIGRP into IS-IS and from IS-IS into EIGRP on the boundary router to

acheive the following requirements:

Seed metric for EIGRP must have the following

characteristics :

Bandwidth = 512 kbps

Delay = 100

Reliability = 255

Load = 1

MTU = 1500

Seed metric for IS-IS must be set to 50.

Only redistribute Level-1 IS-IS routes into EIGRP.

Redistribute EIGRP routes into IS-IS as

Level-1 routes.

May your blades never dull.

Solution in \Solution - BSCI REDISTRIBUTION SIM.txt

Routers Used: 3640

IOS: c3640-jk9s-mz.124-16a

Feature of Topology: EIGRP, ISIS, Route Redistribution

Image:

Download: GNS3-Labs:: BSCI - ISIS & EIGRP Route Redistribution Lab

Enjoy .. LBS

VLAN Database Lost When Restarting? - Saving VLAN.dat To NVRam

LBSources — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:17:37 -0600

Came across a post online that I thought would help those who have been through the problem and upset of losing VLAN configurations once a router in GNS3 or Dynamips is reloaded. This post explains how to prevent this from happening.

ok, when you restart your Router or you turn off the GNS3, the VLAN configuration is missing, why? Because all the VLAN information is save to file vlan.dat. Yes, you know that already.

So, this is the step to save the configuration :

K-ROUTER#erase flash
Erasing the flash filesystem will remove all files! Continue? [confirm]
Erasing device… eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee …erased
Erase of flash: complete

K-ROUTER#squeeze flash:
Squeeze operation may take a while. Continue? [confirm]
squeeze in progress…
Squeeze of flash complete

K-ROUTER#conf t
Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z.
K-ROUTER(config)#vtp file nvram:vlan.dat
Setting device to store VLAN database at filename nvram:vlan.dat.

K-ROUTER(config)#do dir nvram:
Directory of nvram:/

124 -rw- 0 startup-config
125 —- 0 private-config
1 -rw- 600 vlan.dat

129016 bytes total (127940 bytes free)
K-ROUTER(config)#

K-ROUTER(config)#do wr mem
Building configuration…
[OK]

ok, after that you can configure your vlan, vtp without worrying will lost the information.

Credit to the original blog where I found this: GNS3 : Saving VLAN Information

Enjoy ..

LBS

GNS3 Topology: Basic IPSec VPN Over Frame-Relay Lab

LBSources — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:42:37 -0600

Jeremy (AKA Jlgaddis) over at EvilRouters.net created 2 cool labs. 1 was a basic frame-relay lab and the other was adding IPSec VPN to the lab. He gave some great details and outlined the configuration - step by step. I compiled the lab for GNS3 specifically.

Jeremy has an awesome blog .. check him out @ EvilRouters

Routers Used: 3640

IOS: c3640-jk9s-mz.124-16a

Feature of Topology: Frame-Relay, IPSec, ISAKMP, VPN, EIGRP

Image:

Download: EvilRouters - Basic Frame Relay-Basic IPSec Lab

Enjoy .. LBS

GNS3 Announcement: Want To Run An ASA? At Least Run The Code On PEMU

LBSources — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:52:31 -0600

From the GNS3.net official site..

A new tool called “Cisco image unpacker” has been added on the download page. This tool which is simple to use, can unpack Cisco ASA and IOS images to be used with GNS3, Pemu or Qemu. Please note that at the moment only ASA v7 and early images are supported in GNS3 and Pemu. Read the provided README file to know how to use it.

Cisco binary image unpacker is a software that allows you to unpack IOS and ASA images.

Important notice: ASA v7 images can be used in GNS3 and Pemu. At the moment ASA v8 images run only with Qemu.

GNS3 Topology: Multicasting - PIM Sparse-Mode - Anycast RP and MSDP - IPmc Lab

pierky — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 22:43:09 -0600

Here is a very new lab to GNS3-Labs which we havent had before. We have plenty of OSPF, RIP and all the other common routing protocols and what not. Pierky has created this very cool lab featuring Multicast, PIM Sparse-mode, Anycast RP, MSDP. Hope you enjoy!

A source (Sender) needs to send a multicast ping to some receivers (R0, R1 and R2) on multicast group 239.1.2.3.

SW1 and SW2 have equal-cost paths trought C1 and C2; all links are L3, ip pim sparse-mode and EIGRP are running.

C1 and C2 are RPs (on Anycast IP 192.168.1.254) and MSDP peers:

hostname C1
!
interface Loopback0
ip address 192.168.1.254 255.255.255.255
!
interface Loopback1
ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.255
!
ip msdp peer 192.168.1.2 connect-source Loopback1
ip msdp originator-id Loopback1 hostname C2
!
interface Loopback0
ip address 192.168.1.254 255.255.255.255
!
interface Loopback1
ip address 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.255
!
ip msdp peer 192.168.1.1 connect-source Loopback1
ip msdp originator-id Loopback1

Before starting to ping the multicast group from Sender, I suggest you to ping R0, R1 and R2, to wake up connections.

Let R0 and R1 join the 239.1.2.3 group on fa0/0, leaving R2 out:

conf t
int fa0/0
ip igmp join-group 239.1.2.3

At this point, SW1 and C2 know they have some receivers for the group:

SW1#show ip mroute
IP Multicast Routing Table
Flags: D - Dense, S - Sparse, B - Bidir Group, s - SSM Group, C - Connected,
L - Local, P - Pruned, R - RP-bit set, F - Register flag,
T - SPT-bit set, J - Join SPT, M - MSDP created entry,
X - Proxy Join Timer Running, A - Candidate for MSDP Advertisement,
U - URD, I - Received Source Specific Host Report,
Z - Multicast Tunnel, z - MDT-data group sender,
Y - Joined MDT-data group, y - Sending to MDT-data group
Outgoing interface flags: H - Hardware switched, A - Assert winner
Timers: Uptime/Expires
Interface state: Interface, Next-Hop or VCD, State/Mode

(*, 239.1.2.3), 00:00:21/00:02:57, RP 192.168.1.254, flags: SJC
Incoming interface: FastEthernet0/4, RPF nbr 192.168.0.3
Outgoing interface list:
FastEthernet0/2, Forward/Sparse, 00:00:11/00:02:48
FastEthernet0/1, Forward/Sparse, 00:00:21/00:02:57

C2#show ip mroute
IP Multicast Routing Table
[cut]

(*, 239.1.2.3), 00:00:28/00:03:01, RP 192.168.1.254, flags: S
Incoming interface: Null, RPF nbr 0.0.0.0
Outgoing interface list:
FastEthernet0/1, Forward/Sparse, 00:00:28/00:03:01

On Sender, start pinging the group:

Sender#ping 239.1.2.3 repeat 100000

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 100000, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 239.1.2.3, timeout is 2 seconds:

Reply to request 0 from 192.168.10.10, 588 ms
Reply to request 0 from 192.168.11.11, 588 ms
Reply to request 1 from 192.168.10.10, 472 ms
Reply to request 1 from 192.168.11.11, 472 ms
…

As first, SW2 receives the Echo request and sends a PIM-register to the RP (C1), encapsulating the original ICMP packet.

Then, C1 sends a MSDP Source-Active packet to C2: the ICMP packet is encapsulated in the MSDP.

Since C2 has some receivers for the group, it starts forwarding the ICMP packets out FastEthernet0/1 and joins the tree, so that SW1 and SW2 could build the S,G entries.

C2#show ip mroute
IP Multicast Routing Table
[cut]
Outgoing interface flags: H - Hardware switched, A - Assert winner
Timers: Uptime/Expires
Interface state: Interface, Next-Hop or VCD, State/Mode

(*, 239.1.2.3), 00:01:13/00:03:15, RP 192.168.1.254, flags: S
Incoming interface: Null, RPF nbr 0.0.0.0
Outgoing interface list:
FastEthernet0/1, Forward/Sparse, 00:01:13/00:03:15

(192.168.20.10, 239.1.2.3), 00:00:14/00:03:22, flags: MT
Incoming interface: FastEthernet0/0, RPF nbr 192.168.0.6
Outgoing interface list:
FastEthernet0/1, Forward/Sparse, 00:00:14/00:03:15

SW1#show ip mroute
IP Multicast Routing Table
[cut]

(*, 239.1.2.3), 00:01:07/stopped, RP 192.168.1.254, flags: SJC
Incoming interface: FastEthernet0/4, RPF nbr 192.168.0.3
Outgoing interface list:
FastEthernet0/2, Forward/Sparse, 00:00:57/00:02:16
FastEthernet0/1, Forward/Sparse, 00:01:07/00:02:11

(192.168.20.10, 239.1.2.3), 00:00:08/00:02:53, flags: JT
Incoming interface: FastEthernet0/4, RPF nbr 192.168.0.3
Outgoing interface list:
FastEthernet0/1, Forward/Sparse, 00:00:08/00:02:51
FastEthernet0/2, Forward/Sparse, 00:00:08/00:02:51

SW2#show ip mroute
IP Multicast Routing Table
[cut]

(*, 239.1.2.3), 00:00:17/stopped, RP 192.168.1.254, flags: SPF
Incoming interface: FastEthernet0/2, RPF nbr 192.168.0.7
Outgoing interface list: Null

(192.168.20.10, 239.1.2.3), 00:00:17/00:03:27, flags: FT
Incoming interface: FastEthernet0/0, RPF nbr 0.0.0.0
Outgoing interface list:
FastEthernet0/2, Forward/Sparse, 00:00:16/00:03:13

You can try to shutdown the link between C2 and SW2 and see how the tree is builded up again around C1 RP.

Topology:

Routers Used: 3640

IOS: c3640-jk9s-mz.124-16.bin

Feature of Topology: Multicast, PIM Sparse-mode, Anycast RP, MSDP

Download: GNS3-Labs: Pierky - Multicasting - PIM Sparse-Mode - Anycast RP-MSDP - IPmc Lab

GNS3 Topology: Featuring - Virtual Area Links, Multi and Inter Area OSPF & Some Redistribution

LBSources — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:57:49 -0600

Found a nice OSPF lab over at the GNS3.net forums, but it wasn’t properly exported and packaged. So I did what I always do .. Put it together, cleaned it up and tested and it works flawlessly. Very nice lab with virtual area links, RIP redistribution, inter-area and multi-area OSPF.

Routers Used: 3640

IOS: c3640-ik9o3s-mz.124-17a

Feature of Topology: Inter-Area and Multi-Area OSPF, Virtual Area Links, RIP Redistribution

Image:

Download: GNS3-Labs-Multi-Area OSPF Lab

Enjoy .. LBS

Video Tutorial: How to run Multi-PC topology using distributed hypervisors in GNS3

LBSources — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:45:05 -0600

The guys over at BrainBump put together a great tutorial on using distributed hypervisors to improve the overall performance and increase the ability to run more routers in your labs.

Onto the video intro..

This tutorial will walk you through the process of settting up a distributed GNS3 topology where you can use different external hypervisor engines and run GNS3 topology in much easier and smoother fashion. This helps you utilize resources at hand in an efficient manner by distributing processor load across multiple hardware platforms. Most people use WindowsXP / Windows Vista on their laptop machines. However, for GNS3 and dynagen to perform at their peak, i would recommmend you to use a flavour of Linux which speeds up things to greater extent.

Link To Tutorial: How to run multi-pc topology using distributed hypervisors in GNS3

BSCI OSPF Excercise Sim Question From Jim Shank

LBSources — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:11:02 -0600

A fellow reader by the name of Jim has submitted a great SIM lab for all of us BSCI seekers. In the lab he provides a scenario and within the archive he provides a solution file with all the steps to correctly solve the lab. Jim put some great effort into putting the lab together with a fancy background and cool clouds in between the routers connecting, my kind of guy

Here is Jim’s scenario:

OSPF is already setup on routers Gromgol and BootyBay. Area 0 contains Gromgol’s S0/0 interface and BootyBay’s S0/1 interface. BootyBay’s Loopback0 interface is in Area 2.

Quest Requirements

- Configure Undercity’s S0/0 interface in Area 1

- Configure Gromgol’s S0/1 interface in Area 1

- The network grunts are dumb. Make sure the mask you use for Undercity’s S0/0 and Gromgol’s S0/1

would never include other interfaces.

- Apothecary Zinge will be furious if there are any external or inter-area routes in Area 1, he only wants to see the default route.

For the Horde!

Routers Used: 3620

IOS: c3620-ik9o3s7-mz.123-26

Feature of Topology: OSPF

Image:

Download: GNS3-Labs.BSCI EXAM OSPF SIM QUESTION-Jim.Shank

Enjoy .. LBS