Construction of Cisco Virtual Lab Platform

In experiment of network engineering and network construction, students are required to configure Cisco network equipment. Due to limit of lab environment, amount of equipment is not enough and some experiments require much more expensive and higher level equipment that are not practical to purchase and maintain. It is meaningful to use network equipment simulator on PCs. The proposed platform utilizes Dynamips simulator to simulate routers and switches of Cisco product series. Dynamips supports directly loading Cisco IOS images and provides configuration interface as true equipment’s. It has very good teaching effect in experiment of network engineering. And success of the proposed platform shows it can be used in other network related courses.