Dynamips?

jasonboche

I have a few questions about Dynamips.

Is Dynamips primarily used by CCIE candidates or is it also used for other Cisco networking certification studies such as CCNA?

I've read multiple threads about people coming up with PC hardware that is strong enough to run Dynamips. Is this more often than not a problem for people to come up with hardware that will run Dynamips?

I understand Dynamips is CPU intensive. Is it memory intensive as well? Does it require a lot of memory?

Is there a market for Dynamips hardware or hosting packages?

NetworkGod

*burp*

a friend of mine just passed CCIE R&S, he used Dynamips and 2 3750's.

NetworkGod

i got few machines linked as one DynaLab.
4Gigs RAM
512Mb RAM
2Gigs RAM

Dynamips eats RAM like crazy, just like CPU cycles without idlepc values

mikej412

Dynamips/Dynagen can be used all levels of study.... but I don't push it as much in the CCNA forums because I'd hate to work with someone who's never touched a real router.

Plus -- it does the routing side very well, but since it emulates the hardware, the switching support still lags way behind Boson NetSim.

Once you know what you're doing, and are aware of the layer 2 issues in Dynamips -- then I'd say "have at it!"

If you have the physical memory, you can gain a performance boost by using it (rather than using files to "store" the emulated router memory content.

Paul Boz

I used dynamips almost exclusively for my CCNA study, and use it for the CCNP as well. In fact, for the CCIE hardware is probably more important than any other Cisco track because you can't simulate a lot of what the IE covers. Dynamips is definitely usable at all levels of certification for sure.

As far as providing it as a service, I'd probably avoid it. Cisco sort of lets dynamips slide because it's such a handy tool for pursuing their certifications, but if people start profiting from emulating hardware they might not be so happy.

jasonboche

Paul Boz wrote:

I used dynamips almost exclusively for my CCNA study, and use it for the CCNP as well. In fact, for the CCIE hardware is probably more important than any other Cisco track because you can't simulate a lot of what the IE covers. Dynamips is definitely usable at all levels of certification for sure.

As far as providing it as a service, I'd probably avoid it. Cisco sort of lets dynamips slide because it's such a handy tool for pursuing their certifications, but if people start profiting from emulating hardware they might not be so happy.

Yeah that was going to be one of my last questions but I decided to leave it out for now - Is hosting Dynamips legal? I'm aware of similar situations where "hosting" the solution violates the EULA. This was the case with VMware until just recently I believe they removed that restriction from their EULA for the ESX platforms.

Anyway, it doesn't sound like there is much of a market for it then. I guess what provoked me to snoop around about this is because I found it a bit strange that "techno-geek" type people on these forums were having some issues coming up with adequate hardware to run this application. My impression is that cool hardware is highly available to people like us and we always have options for hardware procurement, liberation, whatever, to build that next box in our lab. Plus, there are some really cost effective avenues for making purchases of decent hardware (Ebay, Craigslist, newegg, etc.) If it boils down to a matter of money, well I guess I could understand that somewhat because everyone has a finite budget, but I expect that if a person is going to dedicate themselves to intense certification, a certain amount of money will need to be available for purchases in order to obtain the end goal of certification. That means money for hardware, software, increased electric and cooling costs, divorce, etc.

Thank you,
Jas

Ahriakin

Affordability is relative though. Most of the guys (from what I've seen and plain old common sense) that are at a level where the CCIE is an achievable goal are likely experienced/certified enough by that stage (with a job that reflects this) to afford or have access to advanced lab equipment. It's not always the case though.

I'll try and do a log of my own setup attempts over the next few weeks and get some performance stats together, maybe provide some specifics on the levels of hardware needed per virtual router etc. Doing the security side I won't exactly be pushing the routers too hard but maybe it'll help someone else with their planning.

Grym

Well, it's not just a plug and play app, it has to be tuned for each system, even high end ones. So when people are talking about getting it to work, it usually means they are not taking the time to research the app and are just installing it, tossing a IOS on the machine and firing it up with a pre built .net file and then wondering why things are not running smooth.

You can ghost the IOS which will save resources, you can write the memory requirements to the hard drive which always helps plus the all important Idlepc command.

If you are intrested in getting it to run right there are a couple of places to do the leg work.

Blindhog.net - the guy(s) there have made some great video's on dynamips which will walk you through setting up a simple lab to getting more advanced setups running, great stuff over there.

7200emu.hacki.at - the heart of Dynamips, sample labs, also good info on getting it to run right, plus other helpful info.

I have no affiliation with either of the above sites, have just used both extensively getting things running.

HTH

Paul#4

NetworkGod wrote:

*burp*

a friend of mine just passed CCIE R&S, he used Dynamips and 2 3750's.

This is all you need and a good brain...

...the latter is harder to find.

NetworkGod

indeed
not even arguing