Last week I published a link to Pete Crocker’s RSVP-TE lab, but there’s more: he created another lab using the same topology that uses SR-MPLS with IS-IS to get the job done.

Jeroen Van Bemmel did something similar for SR Linux: his lab topology has fewer devices (plus SR Linux runs in containers), so it’s easily deployable on machines without humongous amount of memory.

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SR Linux, Cumulus VX, and Extreme Virtual EXOS are the only network operating systems I’m aware of that you can download in a ready-for-use format without registration. Anything else? Please write a comment.

Even better, SR Linux and Cumulus VX are available as ready-to-run containers; Cumulus VX is also available as libvirt and VirtualBox Vagrant box. All you have to do to get the lab up and running is:

• Install the prerequisite software (docker, containerlab, netsim-tools)
• Copy topology.yml into an empty directory
• Execute netlab up

Downloading device images from most other vendors requires registration followed by arcane incantations to build a Vagrant box or container image.

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Want even more platform options? Here’s another topology using Cisco CSR and Arista vEOS.

The beauty of all these solutions: SR-MPLS is one of the standard netsim-tools modules, and getting it configured in your lab is as easy as adding sr to the module list.

Release History

2022-01-31

Images for Extreme Virtual EXOS are available on GitHub