GNS3 requirements

beach5563

I'm studying for CCENT/CCNA and have been hearing a lot about GNS3. I heard you h ave to have a dual core processor and about 4 gigs of ram. Is that true. Is there any kind of way to maybe tweak it for PCs that are not that powerful. Just wondering. It looks like a real cool tool to use. It looks good for routing and maybe I could get a couple of switches to add to it. Just wondering if anyone could give me some insight on this.
Thanks

cisco_trooper

GNS3 is a hog. You can get away with using just plain dynamips on much less. I used to run dynamips on an AMD XP3000+ with 256M of RAM. I was able to get about 14 routers going.

beach5563

cisco_trooper wrote: »

GNS3 is a hog. You can get away with using just plain dynamips on much less. I used to run dynamips on an AMD XP3000+ with 256M of RAM. I was able to get about 14 routers going.

Ok that sounds good. I have an intel 4 1.8 Ghz processor with a gig of ram in it. I'm thinking that could work. Will it still give you a real IOS like GNS3? I have already downloaded GNS3 and it has Dynamips in it I think. Do you have any info on how I can set it up and all just for Dynamips. Thanks so much for your help.

spiderjericho

I stay away from Linux but I hear GNS3 is a lot less resource intensive on Unix distros than working on 7, Vista and XP. But if you have a quad core and probably 4 GB of RAM, it will run fine with 10+ routers in Windows.

beach5563

Thanks so much year I hear some people use linux for this too. I may just go with Packet Tracer for CCNA and then once I get to CCNP go for GNS3 by then I will have a better computer and a couple of peices of real equipment too. : )
Thanks so much

spiderjericho wrote: »

I stay away from Linux but I hear GNS3 is a lot less resource intensive on Unix distros than working on 7, Vista and XP. But if you have a quad core and probably 4 GB of RAM, it will run fine with 10+ routers in Windows.

cisco_trooper

beach5563 wrote: »

Ok that sounds good. I have an intel 4 1.8 Ghz processor with a gig of ram in it. I'm thinking that could work. Will it still give you a real IOS like GNS3? I have already downloaded GNS3 and it has Dynamips in it I think. Do you have any info on how I can set it up and all just for Dynamips. Thanks so much for your help.

GNS3 is a graphical front-end for dynamips that allows you to draw and visualize your network in software. This might be nice for newcomers but it certainly isn't a requirement. You can setup everything you need with dynamips alone if you are willing to take an hour to read through the dynamips configuration documents. It is an hour well spent and your lab will perform better. I'll see if I can find the link. If not, google is your friend.

cisco_trooper

That was easy. -> Dynamips / Dynagen Tutorial

Good luck.

beach5563

Awesome thanks so much I will check this out. Appreciate all of everybodys help.

cisco_trooper wrote: »

That was easy. -> Dynamips / Dynagen Tutorial

Good luck.

martell1000

beach5563 wrote: »

Ok that sounds good. I have an intel 4 1.8 Ghz processor with a gig of ram in it. I'm thinking that could work. Will it still give you a real IOS like GNS3? I have already downloaded GNS3 and it has Dynamips in it I think. Do you have any info on how I can set it up and all just for Dynamips. Thanks so much for your help.

the ram might be a problem. depending on you OS 1gig might be already full before you even start up gns3. and in there you are assining ram to every router you emulate, if this gets swapped to disk things might get very slow...

alxx

gsn3 ran okay on an old mini mac of mine, core duo at 1.6GHz but with 2GB ram it could handle 2-3 routers once you set the idle pc

A newer mac with core2 duo 2GHz with 4GB ram had no problems with 4 -6 routers.
Both on osx not windows.