Using device emulation
The best use case for using emulation in our network automation would be for routers. With router emulation, we can test several features of the router without having it physically. But router emulation is perhaps the hardest to accomplish and the costliest in terms of resources. As an example, let’s explore how a popular Cisco router emulator works, called Dynamips. Figure 9.1 represents a Cisco router being emulated by using Dynamips on a Linux host:
Figure 9.1 – Cisco router emulation
As illustrated, Dynamips is a software layer that emulates the hardware for Cisco routers. Dynamips can emulate some Cisco hardware such as network ports, CPU, memory, auxiliary ports, and console ports. Dynamips was created by Christophe Fillot in 2005 to emulate the MIPS processor architecture for Cisco routers. Today, Dynamips is supported and maintained by the GNS network simulation team, more details of which can be found at https...
