Network Simulation: Anything other than pirated IOS images?

[Wheels Of Confusion]

Been getting the itch to dip my toe back into networking. I took a few courses for Network+ and CCNA back in the day but never went for the exams. I remember the classes using Cisco's Packet Tracer software for visually simulating a network with IOS configurations, and also using the more powerful QEMU-based GNS3 with "legitimately acquired" Cisco images just to show us what was out there and what it could do that PT couldn't. That was well over a decade ago.

I took a quick look around and it still seems like the best free setup for virtual labs is GNS3, and that the majority of material out there for it assumes you're using it to run IOS images or something similar, "legitimately acquired."

What else is there for graphical network simulators of a similar type, where you pull icons of switches and routers and clients around and control their configurations to see what does/n't work? Something that covers things like VLANs and Subnets at least.

I've seen videos of Filius but it looks even less featureful than Packet Tracer was, not being able to simulate VLANs for example.

 

[Paladin]

Cisco VIRL and EVE-NG, those are 2 other major ones I have heard of but not used.

CORE is a Navy developed thing that does some network lab virtualization. Never heard of anyone using it but I am sure there are some.
https://github.com/coreemu/core

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

VIRL is deprecated and no longer available. Cisco Modeling Labs took over from it like half a decade ago.

EVE-NG seems to require VMWare, and the non-commercial version hasn't been update in quite a while. Looks like the developer has completely shifted to focus on the commercial version.
https://www.eve-ng.net/index.php/community/
https://www.eve-ng.net/index.php/supported-hardware-and-software-systems/

 

[Paladin]

Looks like, I guess that is why GNS3 is the most popular option. Personally, I find virtual lab setups a bit frustrating so I stick to cheap, used physical devices as much as possible. Cisco gear is really good at getting you almost all the core functionality across a big range of products even if the capacity or performance is wildly different. Like, a $30 used catalyst switch can get you 99% of the features of a $10,000 chassis switch, as far as just turning things on and fiddling with syntax and testing stuff goes. Obviously not for everything but it gets you surprisingly far into the standards based stuff at least. Same for wifi APs, firewalls, etc.

Where you get into the really tricky stuff is the software based things like the million and a half different NAC and security platforms that integrate with the different brands and models of hardware, etc.

 

[teubbist]

EVE-NG is generally deployed on bare metal, although with nested virt enabled I don't see a reason it won't work under a KVM based hypervisor. And dispite the lack of updatse it still functions, just don't put it on the internet.

containerlab is the current hotness in network sims, but there's no GUI outside of something like Graphite that lets you view the toplogy post launch. Still, laying out the topology via YAML isn't that hard and the project includes a large number of examples, with even more scattered in Github.

edit: although getting images and/or licenses for images of some of the bigger stuff might prove to be the hardest part, if you don't have contacts in the industry that will let you "borrow" some

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

Even back when I was in class, "Buy a bunch of cheap Cisco devices off eBay" was the standard advice. Kind of disappointed more vendor-neutral and anti-gear acquisition solutions aren't really taking off.

So maybe I'll have to get physical after all and put some of my extra Raspberry Pis to use if I want to simulate a simple topology with a few different client devices? That would at least send me down the path of using native Linux networking tools.

 

[Pervis]

Cisco Modeling Labs took over from it like half a decade ago.

I've used CML to lab up some work WANs/VPNs and it did a decent job.
It's not free, but if you only need it for a small lab, it's not terrible.