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Is There A Cisco-IOS Emulator?

Posted by Cliff on from the network-admins-get-all-of-the-fun dept.

Peter Berghmans asks: "Emulators everywhere today. It's not very difficult to run several OS-es at the same time. Just to try out something new, to develop, to learn. But I can't find an emulator for the Cisco-IOS. Although it would be usefull to learn about the OS of one of the most important pieces of hardware on the Internet: routers. Is there some development to run IOS under Linux?"

4 of 12 comments (clear)

  1. Re:cisco ios emulators by sybex by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 3

    I've tried one of those simulators, I don't recall the name of the program, but I think it was written by Todd Lammle. Very poor. (To his credit, he writes better books.) It was not the kind of thing you could hack around with. I suppose my greatest complaint is that very simple broken configurations would actually work when they're not supposed to. Very simple problems, like setting up static routes in only one direction, and having reply packets make it through. Despite all these bugs, it costs roughly $300. I *ahem* evaluated the product before deciding that it didn't perform as advertised.

    I was lucky because in Toronto we have a study group. They have a router lab available online for Toronto-area residents. It is not cost effective nor all that rewarding to allow people to book time on the routers globally... but you might want to search the web.. you might find something.

    Your other option as somebody recommended is to build your own lab. Most people studying for their CCNE do this. Writing the exams is the only reason I could think that somebody would ask specifically for an IOS emulator.

    I did a quick search and there does appear to be a Cisco IOS emulator for modifying ipchains rules using IOS commands. It looks pretty young. It didn't exist when I was studying for my CCNA http://www.tarball.net/cish/

    I should probably give it a try some day.

  2. Limited Scope by false_sense_of_sec · · Score: 3

    I am sure you are already aware of the IOS "simulators" available with various training products. If this isn't sufficient for your needs, I would suggest heading to ebay to buy an old (upgradable rom) router. Without the interfaces, the IOS isn't terribly useful.

  3. Try Zebra... by velkro · · Score: 4

    Zebra ( is still beta, last I looked) but is a full implementation of rip/ospf/bgp/etc... and the configuration interface is nearly identical to IOS.

    The benifit here is that it's real, so you can setup 2 (or more) boxes and actually *make something work* rather than paste commands blindly into an emulator. And, of course, it's GPL'd. Better than Merit's gated implementation of the above protocols, and easier to configure.

  4. cisco ios emulators by sybex by whi5tler · · Score: 4

    There are two versions from Sybex. One for ccna ($80), and one for ccnp ($300). I just got the ccna version. I found the ccna version at http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp ?theisbn=0782127282&vm= but I couldn't find the ccnp version for sale.

    Is there any effort being put into emulating a network? Do all of the configuration ahead of time, and just copy it over. or whatever elese we could dream up.