Go CCIE Go!! - A Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert

Cristi P wrote: > > Two questions: > > 1. Are u using vmware for that ?
No, nothing like that. The Dynamips server app runs directly from a Windows desktop.
> 2. I haven’t had the chance to run the CD..does it have/emulate > switches > ? I believe it doesn’t. What switches are yhou talking about > below ? >
OK, just to be clear, I do not have the VirtualPod CD working at all (haven’t tried again since my first post, I gather that this project was abandoned or put on the back burner). So Dynamips is at the core (actually, come to think of it, IOS is truly at the core), Dynagen is a text-based front end to simplify (greatly) the building of labs, and I think VirtualPods would have been the next evolution yet, somewhat of a front end to the front end, allowing for the easy sharing of lab scenarios and router configs.
In Dynagen, you have to build your environment first (your routers, their interfaces, what those interfaces connect to, etc) and then you have to build the router configs from the ground up. Basically, once you’ve created the virtual network/test environment, when you boot the routers, they come up as if out of the box with “would you like to enter the initial configuration” prompt (yes, you can save your router configs in a given scenario after this first step). So if I have it right, VirtualPods would have allowed you to dump in both the test environment stuff that Dynagen needs (to in turn feed to Dynamips) and *also* some initial router configs so that you wouldn’t have to deal with everything all the way down to “logging synchronous” on every router every time that you create a new test environment.
The switches that I refer to are generic “frame movers.” They are not IOS or CAT OS-based Cisco switches. Say you need five routers all connected together on a common Ethernet segment (you want to see OSPF DR and BDR election, as an example). Then you need a generic little switch to tie them all together.
I continue to play with this daily and am getting better at cranking out networks using Dynagen. It’s still a bit cumbersome, but once you get hooked on running IOS on your laptop, there’s no turning back…

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