What is GNS3?
In computing language, an emulator is software or hardware that allows one computer (the host) to act like another computer (the guest).
An emulator permits the host to run software or use exterior devices intended for the guest.
Graphical Network Simulator 3 (GNS3) is a network software emulator.
It allows the amalgamation of virtual and actual devices, used to simulate compound networks. It practices Dynamips emulation to simulate the Cisco IOS.
GNS3 is used by many large corporations including Walmart, NASA and AT&T. GNS3 is also widespread for training of network skilled certification assessments.
Let's start discussing on how to use GNS3 in Linux OS.
You can see in the image that if you've gns3 installed in the virtual OS environment or even on local PC, you can just search for it and open it by clicking on it.
When you click on the GNS3, it's gonna pop up new project window. If you've saved project, you can go ahead and close this pop-up window and open the saved project. If not, then save this as a new project and give it a meaningful name.
After saving the project, its going to ask you if you want to install new updates. [if any updates are available].
NOTE: You should not install any updates if you're in the middle of any project.
Let's add some devices now.
As you can see in the images below, there are different sections for different devices. The 1st image is for adding switch and in the 2nd one, I've shown the option to add routers and PCs.
It's just a drag and drop for all the available devices to you. Drag and drop the number of switches, routers and PCs you want for your network configuration.
You can right click on any devices and do certain type of operations on them. Like change the hostname, make a duplicate of it, start it, change the symbol or open a console and configure it.
Let's see how to connect the devices now.
As shown in the image below, Click on the last button to add ethernet connections between devices.
After that click on the PC1 and select the available ethernet.
Then go to SW1[Switch or router if you've router connected to PC1], and press left click. It'll show available fast ethernet connections.
Follow the same process until you have all the devices connected. When you click on the button as shown in the image below, for console to open, it's not going to allow you to do that because you haven't started any single node after connecting them.
As shown in the image below, we're going to start all the nodes by clicking on the start node button.
As you can see in the images below, all the nodes are started now. So we can go ahead start configuring each devices one by one.
To configure devices all you need to do is right click on the devices, and select the option "console". We're not going to configure any devices in this post. I'll do that in next post.
Let me know what do you guys think of this post.
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