

In this tutorial we will look how to download, install and setup basic lab with Packet tracer.

Here is a list of ways to get practical experience.

So a person who wants to get certified needs practical experience. What is CCNA or Cisco Certified Network Associate?Ĭisco certification exams mostly depend on practical experience. We have already examined CCNA certifications in the following tutorial. So when considering those software you must consider if a simulator is good enough for your need or if you need to emulate real OSes, and which kind of devices you want to simulate, then compare the features of each software versus your need.Cisco provides a different level of certification called CCNA, CCNP, CCIE for its products, and general network topics. In the Juniper world you also have Olive. GNS3 is another emulator, open source, that originally aimed at emulating Cisco devices but now support much more.

As you can guess from the name it is made by Cisco and support only Cisco devices. Those emulated device may not have all the hardware feature you could find in some routers, but since you run the real operating system, you have all the feature of this OS, and the true behavior of this OS, limited by the performance of the emulating program and the hardware it runs on.Ĭisco VIRL is an emulator. It only contains features that Cisco felt needed to teach CCNA level courses, and doesn't incorporate many advanced features that may exist in Cisco IOS or other Cisco products.Īn emulator on the other end simulate devices on which you can run real software, like Cisco IOS. It is as faithful to the original device as the programmer make it, but cannot be 100% accurate, because it doesn't run the same code at all.Ĭisco Packet Tracer is a simulator. There's a fundamental distinction to make first, between a simulator and an emulator.Ī simulator is a program that replicate the behavior of the simulated device.
