Hello everyone,
As some of you already know now I’m associated with Netmetrics-Solutions and I’m developing for them the R/S workbook for Dynamips, in this post I’ll explain how to install Dynamips and put the necessary .net (Dynamips file) plus the Diagram connection for you to download (and keep an eye on Netmetric’s website since sooner you will be able to buy the new workbook version at a very good price!!!)
For those who does not know Dynamips is a powerful way to emulate a cisco routers (different from those emulators that only emulated some commands of a Cisco IOS) Dynamips was developed by Christophe Fillot and can actually load a IOS file on your computer, so far it can emulate a lot of routers (switches are not included) in the netmetric you will see that a 3640 is used with a NM-16ESW card (which gives us 16 FastEthernet ports).
First you need to install winpcap click here: then you can install Dynamips.
You have two ways of installing dynamips, first is to download the dynamips executable file or either go to a package called Dynagen (it’s a front end written by Greg Anuzelli) which has the Dynamips files in the package. The Dynagen package can be download here (install the Windows installer package)
The last one is to add a Microsoft loopback address if you want to use a Terminal Access Server (to do a reverse telnet to access the equipments) or rather you could install TerraTerm or SecureCRT and open all the equipments in different tabs I prefer this method.
If you don’t know how to add a loopback interface in Windows go to this webpage: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/839013 (Make sure you reboot your machine before you can use it)
Now that you have Dynamips installed download the .net file including the Diagram with connection between the virtual routers (This is the .net for R/S track) clicking here
After changing the right parameters such as the right image directory and workingdir directory you are good to go, double click first in the bat file “dynamips-start.cmd” that will start up the two dynamips processes and the last one double click in the “Netmetric_Routing_Switching.net“, you will need to have a cco account with cisco in order to download an image (sorry guys but I can’t help anybody at this point)
You need to find the most suitable idlepc for you to use, plus binding the loopback interface with the ACCESS_SERVER router:
[[Router ACCESS_SERVER]]
model = 3640
console = 2000
autostart = false
E0/0 = NIO_gen_eth:\Device\NPF_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In order to do this click on Network List and find the corresponding NPF_ of your loopback interface and add in the last line of the Access Server.
The ACCESS_SERVER initial config file is using the IP address 169.254.10.20 and has a default route pointing to the IP Address (169.254.10.10) you need to configure the Loopback IP address with the IP: 169.254.10.10
Now you just need to start the routers, try to start R1 first (start R1) from dynagen console and find the idlepc with command (idlepc get R1) to find the specifically idlepc chose one marked with asterisk.
Then you can modify the .net file and put this idlepc for both instances in the line # idlepc = 0×60531c2c (get rid of the comment line and put your idlepc value there)
Enjoy your virtual routers with Dynamips and wait for Netmetric’s workbook to be released. Hope you have enjoyed this post. The step-by-step video is available in Tutorial section, there is one ERRATA in the video when I said to get from one router section back to Access Server the right sequence of keys is (Control + Alt + 6 and then x)
Thanks
The official webpages in case you need to check for more information are:
http://www.dynagen.org/tutorial.htm
http://7200emu.hacki.at/index.php
