Dynamips 10 Steps Guide

Dynamips 10 Steps Guide

Dynamips has changed the network world and it helped many network fans to obtain the network labs without paying any fee. It is fantastic when you are running several Cisco Routers on your computer, even an entire CCIE Lab!
I do believe there are some guides in the internet which you can follow to use the Dynamips, however, a few my friends are interested on this and I am too lazy to explain It is a draft instead of a real guide, just call it
Dynamips 10 Steps for Dummies
by CiscoSpot
Any distribution is welcome, please feel free to contact net@netap.com
The website you must know if you are going to be a Dynamiper.
Dynamips Official Blog, http://www.ipflow.utc.fr/blog/Dynagen Official website, http://dynagen.org/Winpcap Official website, http://www.winpcap.org/
Step by Step
1. Download Winpcap, http://www.winpcap.org/install/default.htm
2. Download Dynagen,http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=160317
3. Install Winpcap.
4. Install Dynagen.
Three shortcuts will appear on your desktop, Dynagen Sample labs (Folder), Dynamips Server, Network device list. Double-click Dynagen Sample labs and you will see a file called “all_config_options.txt”, which is quite useful for you. Open it by Wordpad instead of Notepad and view the options you can utilize in the labs.
Open “Simple lab 1” and right-click the simple1.net then choose “Edit network file”, and choose Wordpad to open it. It is a 7200 platform and there are two routers in the diagram using 160MB ram, respectively. The main configurations inside are as below.
5. Download Cisco IOS for Cisco 3600 serials.Although Dynamics support several Cisco platforms, personally I prefer 3640 when comparing the RAM requirement, modules support and IOS features. You can search IOS resources from internet yourself.
6. Put *.bin file (c3640-jk9s-mz.123-7.T12.bin in this guide) of your Cisco IOS in some folder. For example, D:\Dynamips.7. Copy simple1.net to the folder D:\Dynamips and change the file by Wordpad. You can also change its name to mylab.net, or the others as well. It doesn’t make any sense for the lab. Based on our information described above, we change the network file as below.8. Run “Dynamips Server” on your desktop. Maybe it will be blocked by Windows Firewall. Just Unblock it. Double-click your *.net file such as mylab.net. Use command “help” to illustrate all the commands you can used through Dynagen. The general commands are “start” and “telnet”.Now we run “start R1” and “telnet R1”. You might notice that there is an alert when you run the command to start R1. When you are running the router without “idle-pc value” configured, the CPU utilization of your computer will keep very high till 100% even only one router instance running.
9. Wait for router R1 has been started until the following message in your Telnet Session, “Would you like to enter the initial configuration dialog? [yes/no]:” . Come back to your Dynagen Window and type the command “idlepc get R1”. You must wait a while and some possible values will be supplied to you.
After you see the information, you can choose the number the system advised. For example, 6 and press Enter. By Windows Task Manager, You can check the CPU utilization when you apply the value to R1. If the CPU utilization is decreased from 100%, then copy the value that you applied, close the Dynagen window and Dynamips Server window.
10. Open your *.net file again and add the idlepc value to it, which is specific for current IOS image. For example,
So far to speak, all the installation and preparation has been finished. We can easily change network topology in the *.net file and simulate various networks following the options in file “all_config_options.txt”.