GNS3 topology for INE Workbook

Now that my topology in GNS3 is exactly as in INE Workbook 1 I can share it with you if you don’t want to do all the basic configurations and connections by yourself.

After spending too much money on different rack rentals in the past few months I decided that I will definitely need to try to use GNS3 for simulating my CCIE labs. It will be the only solution if I didn’t want to spend all my money and then have no more left to pay myself trip to Cisco HQ.

GNS3 BGP topology

After one whole day of struggling with different GNS3 issues I did succeed to configure almost everything. From now I am able to use GNS3 for almost all chapters of my loved INE Workbook VOL.1 and probably VOL.2 also.

There are some things that are not available on GNS3 simulated IOS and I will try to list them below at some point. Other thing that took me some time are that the interfaces are named differently. Cisco Etherswitch Module is added to router in GNS3 order to simulate some basic switch features that is normally not available in GNS3. There is no way to use 0/0 – 0/21 port names on that Etherswitch Module. The interfaces are 1/0 – 1/15 so you cannot do nobrainer paste of config to those “switch” devices. Some serial interfaces are for example Serial 0/0 and in the workbook they are Serial 0/0/0 so this is another one. There are furthermore some other changes to witch interfaces are different devices connected but all the devices now are connected to all other devices exactly as in VOL.1 physical topology. This file down there is prepared for BGP lab chapter of INE Workbook 1. but keep in mind that it can be good for all other parts of the Workbook as the interface configuration is not changed across the Workbook 1 so you just need to modify routing to get started with other chapters.

Do the topology by yourself, you will learn more!

From my perspective it is even better that the topology is messed up a little in GNS3. Furthermore GNS3 does not follow the interface names and that is also somehow better. Do the topology by yourself and try to get most things to work connecting all the devices from scratch. Maybe you are thinking now, I don’t want to do this, how can this be better, I will lose a lot of time to get this lab to work!

Yes, maybe you will, but that is the primary reason for learning for the CCIE exam, right? You just love to type in some configs on Cisco devices and get the out a nice and working topology. You will catch yourself thinking Layer2 and then Layer3 and then back to Layer2 and this altogether will be in future crucial to pass the exam.

Long story short, Use my topology, especially if you know the basics and want to go straight to BGP

This topology together with all connections and device configurations is Basic BGP Routing initial configurations from INE’s rack topology number 1 but created from scratch so the interface names are changed and some other things are changed in order for everything to work nicely. EIGRP and basic BGP are configured here and working. You can simply take this file, open it in GNS3 and start with 18th task in BGP chapter. Please note that for the first 17 tasks you need to load Initial BGP initial configurations that is basically Basic configuration if you remove BGP configuration from all devices.

I am thinking to make others chapters topology file with configuration too but I will do it as I am getting to those chapter later on.

DOWNLOAD

  • BGP initial topology zip file
    • To make everything work without any tuning of the configuration and topology files I did prepare this in a way that if you unzip the file directly to C:\ it will put there GNS3_INE folder from which you can simply start the topology file.
    • If you unzip somewhere else, you will need to change the path for IOS image and config files directory inside topology file. (topology.net)

    If there is something that does not work please leave a comment so I will try to fix it. I hope this will help you get started with GNS3 learning.

 

 

16 Comments

  1. DmitriN March 17, 2014
  2. inno March 25, 2014
  3. Mark April 2, 2014
    • Valter Popeskic April 12, 2014
  4. sagar May 1, 2014
    • Valter Popeskic May 2, 2014
  5. Heeyeol Yu July 30, 2014
    • Valter Popeskic July 30, 2014
  6. khizer October 24, 2014
    • Valter Popeskic October 29, 2014
  7. sheraz October 28, 2014
  8. 9VENOM4 December 14, 2014
    • Valter Popeskic December 16, 2014
  9. forest66 March 31, 2015
    • Valter Popeskic March 31, 2015
  10. aksi April 28, 2017

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