Netmiko with GNS3 console connection

The content in this post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. All software rights belong to their respective owners. I’ve read quite a few tutorials on Netmiko with GNS3, but none of them show you how to directly utilize the console connection as the management interface for Cisco devices. In addition to the CiscoIosSSH driver, Kirk Byers also implemented the CiscoIosTelnet driver for establishing a connection to a Cisco device. This is perfect for GNS3 because the default console connection is essentially a Telnet connection without authentication. ...

December 18, 2024 · 12 min

Add Cisco routers for Dynamips to GNS3 on macOS

The content in this post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. All software rights belong to their respective owners. Dynamips may seem to be a bygone technology for the present day, but it’s still a great solution for learning routing concepts on emulated Cisco router platforms. Want to kick it old school with the Cisco 7200 Series Router? ...

May 11, 2024 · 2 min

GNS3 with macOS on Apple Silicon

Before we work our way through the steps, I will start by pointing out GNS3 server has the following constraints when running on Apple Silicon: Lack of Linux KVM for x86_64 virtualized guests Slight performance penalty with emulated x86_64 Linux binaries (Rosetta ) The following are my results after testing a number of different Cisco device types: Device Working? Information IOL ✅ - IOL L2 ✅ - IOSv ✅ - IOSv L2 ✅ - ASAv ❌ Requires SSSE3 CPU instructions for cryptographic operations Catalyst 8000V ❌ Requires vmx or svm CPU flag for Linux KVM Nexus 9000v ❌ Requires vmx or svm CPU flag for Linux KVM As you can see, we’re primarily limited to Cisco (IOL , IOSv , Dynamips ) images, VPCS, and Docker containers. The upside is that we’re rarely CPU-bound running labs on Apple Silicon. The amount of system memory in the Mac is usually the limiting factor. And let’s face it: connecting to a dedicated x86_64 GNS3 compute server with ample CPU cores and RAM is the ideal solution for running large labs. ...

April 29, 2024 · 4 min