I have done mostly rack rentals so far and for pure layer 2 it’s a must but I want to mix with Dynamips for labs that are not heavy on layer 2. I wanted to use the configs provided for vol1 in Dynamips but the interfaces does not match since the serial interfaces is in a different slot. The NM-16ESW only has 16 ports instead of 24 and there are also some differences on the backbone routers. Going through each configuration before each lab would take a lot of time and be very tedious. Since I couldn’t find anything that suited my need I wrote a shellscript to convert the configs for me. Disclaimer: I have very little experience with scripting and if you want to use the script, do it at your own risk. The code is very ugly and can probably be more efficient but it works. If you find any errors please post them in comments. The script uses sed to replace text in the configs. You can find the script here. The only thing you need to modify is the newdir=”/home/reaper/INE/configs/Dynamips”. Change it to your homedir, I store the files for r1-r6 etc in INE/configs and the script creates the Dynamips dir.
Converting INE vol1 configs to Dynamips
You got any real switches? How many switches do the INE books have? I now have 2 3550’s and a borrowed 3560 from work at home. This will be hooked up to my dynamips box (which has 8 ethernet ports to connect to the switches)
Enough?
They use 4 x 3560 in the topology like the real lab. You can do 95% of the stuff on a 3550 though. If you want to run the full topology you would need 12x ethernet ports to get everything connected or you could use a breakout switch that does Q-in-Q and only use one port. Three switches will probably get you pretty far though. Unfortunately I don’t have enough switches, I could probably get together two or three 3550’s but my Dynamips box is not located at work and I don’t want to bring the switches home so I’m using rack rentals for anything layer 2.
I was going to lab up L2 stuff, but honestly wanted something of my own. The 2 3550’s cost me £220 so it’s not too bad. Also they are not taking up much space (my lab is a small PC with these switches at the end of my bed) Wife doesn’t like it too much, but thankfully it’s off most of the time 😛
Hi Daniel,
I found really great the work you have done documenting all your work to get the CCIE. It is appreciated. I am on the quest to still studying for the Written but also getting ready for the lab. And I am planning to built the INE lab on Dynamips with real switches. I would like to know if I can have your script to do the conversion. Is that possible?
Thanks in advance, you are doing a great Job.
Christian
Hi Christian,
I’m glad that you found my site. Of course you can have it, this is exactly why I shared it to help others achieve their CCIE. I hope that people can learn from some of the stuff I’ve written so they don’t have to spend more time than necessary on tweaking Dynamips etc. I used Dynamips a lot in the beginning but lately I’ve been lazy and used mostly rack rentals 🙂 You can find the script at here.
I was just about to write something similar to this! But this is awesome! Saved me some work.
This is great for everyone out there who is setting up a full dynamips, or hybrid dynamips lab.
Thanks!
Glad it helped you out. Hopefully you will find other use from the site also. Don’t miss my post on how to tweak idlemax. Good luck with your studies Yuri 🙂
Hi Daniel;
Thank you for sharing such valuable experience with us, you’re doing a great effort here.
Can you please guide me to on how to run the mentioned script in Windows 7 64 bit.
I searched a lot to do so to avoid interrupting your journey, as it’s very urgent to me to start doing the labs, but based on my Zero Linux /scripting knowledge, I’m empty handed unfortunately.
Thanks;
Hi,
You could try to use Cygwin which is a Linux like environment for Windows. Otherwise you could try to do a macro in Notepad++.
HTH
Daniel
Dear reaper81 i have a problem using dynamips dynamips network file dosent match the internetwork expert volume 2 topology of R&S lab iam using network file ver 4.0.1 its dosent match the ehternet inteface for example R4 ethernet connected with R5 & R6 this connetion dont have when i try to edit iam gett earror unable to bind please please please if you have dynamips updated networkfile to practice internetwork expert volume 1 & 2 ver 4 please share with me that willl be great help for me thank you a lot U’r doing a great job
my personal email id [email protected] plese please please if you have the network file please share…..
The physical topology is always the same for Vol2. It’s only the logical topology that changes. You should use version 5.00 from http://www.ine.com/resources/iosonpc.htm
That is the latest version.
HTH
Daniel
appriciate U’r replay thank a lot Daniel i will try it with version 5.00
Hi Daniel,
Glad to come across your blog You re really doing a great job. Please I intend starting an effort towards the CCIE lab also. The problem with me is that I dont have any knowledge of linux. Please is there any other option for me to implement an hybrid lab on windows OS? as i cant afford a real lab. OR is there anyway that i can get started with dynamips easily even on linux?….Really need you to guide me on this. I am already preparing to buy 3 3560s from a friend. Is this okay for my quest? Tx in advance
My guess is that it can be done in Windows. I’ve never seen any describe it though. You need a NIC that can do dot1Q and that is a bit more messy in Windows. Doing it in Linux shouldn’t be too hard. Here are some articles describing how to do it.
You didn’t remember to put any attachment. I will be glad to receive the step by step using linux.
Also, please mention if I will be okay with 3pcs 3560
Hi,
I think you should go with 4 switches. All labs are designed for using 4 switches. Technology wise you could do probably everything with 3 but it would require you to customize the labs which is a pain. You don’t need 4x 3560 you can use 2x 3560 and 2x 3550. That should not cost more than 3x 3560 that you were planning to buy. I will post the attachments again (they are URLs to other sites).
21500.net
IP Expert
Mellowd
HTH
Daniel
Thanks a bunch man! I will go through and update soon
I’ve posted a script in the INE forums that might be of use to you. It’s a perl script that takes the stock INE configs and does an automatic find/replace on terms you specify. Once you setup the script one, you just run it for each set of configs and it magically spits out configs that match your lab.
http://ieoc.com/forums/t/17455.aspx
Let me know if you find it useful.
-Keller
Cool,
I’ll check it out 🙂 My version was just a quick hack to get things started. How far into studies are you?