Simulator for Mac OSX

renilcerym · 05-02-2009, 11:55 PM

Does anyone know if there is any good Cisco router/switch simulators for Mac OSX? I tried searching for one but I could not find too much about it. I've been using packet tracer on my Windows machine at work but I'd like to be able to practice from home as well. Thanks

tiersten · 05-03-2009, 01:07 AM

dynamips will run on OSX. It will emulate certain older Cisco router hardware. It has very poor support for switches. The sticky issue is that it isn't legal to acquire or run the necessary IOS image for dynamips. Cisco don't allow you to run it on any non Cisco hardware.

If you have an Intel mac, you can use something like Boot Camp or VMware Fusion to run Windows.

renilcerym · 05-03-2009, 03:34 AM

Thanks for the info. I might have to just break down and set up Boot Camp then. I was kind of curious if anyone has tried installing the Linux version of Packet Tracer on Mac.

tiersten · 05-03-2009, 04:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renilcerym

I was kind of curious if anyone has tried installing the Linux version of Packet Tracer on Mac.

Hrm. Is there a compatibility layer to allow Linux apps to run under OSX?

tiersten · 05-03-2009, 04:17 AM

The official Cisco CCNA simulator apparently supports OSX. This isn't Packet Tracer which is only supposed to be for Cisco Network Academy students. The only issue is that the CCNA version isn't actually ready yet. Only the CCENT simulator is currently available but you do get a free upgrade to the CCNA version when it finally ships.

renilcerym · 05-03-2009, 05:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tiersten

Hrm. Is there a compatibility layer to allow Linux apps to run under OSX?

Well kind of. OSX is based off of Linux and has the same command terminal. I have heard a lot of people say that they have been able to get Linux apps running on their Mac. I'm trying to see if I can get it to work right now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tiersten

The official Cisco CCNA simulator apparently supports OSX. This isn't Packet Tracer which is only supposed to be for Cisco Network Academy students. The only issue is that the CCNA version isn't actually ready yet. Only the CCENT simulator is currently available but you do get a free upgrade to the CCNA version when it finally ships.

Thanks for the info. I wasnt aware that Cisco was working on an official CCNA simulator. Maybe I'll give that one a try pretty soon.

tiersten · 05-03-2009, 06:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renilcerym

Well kind of. OSX is based off of Linux and has the same command terminal.

No. They're both variants of UNIX but they're not based on each other. Many commands operate in the same way but the underlying operating system is significantly different between the two. The executable file format is different for one thing. OSX uses Mach files whilst modern Linux uses ELF.

Quote:

Originally Posted by renilcerym

I have heard a lot of people say that they have been able to get Linux apps running on their Mac.

If you're referring to the Fink apps then they were recompiled from source. The source level interfaces are mostly compatible but the binary level interfaces aren't.

Packet Tracer is a closed source binary and it isn't possible to recompile it. What I was asking was whether there was a compatibility layer that allowed Linux binaries to run on OSX. If there isn't then you won't be able to get Packet Linux for Linux running.

Forsaken_GA · 05-03-2009, 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by renilcerym

Well kind of. OSX is based off of Linux and has the same command terminal. I have heard a lot of people say that they have been able to get Linux apps running on their Mac. I'm trying to see if I can get it to work right now.

I'm guessing you haven't spent alot of time in the Unix world

The underlying Unix on OSX is called Darwin, and it uses a Mach kernel, not the Linux kernel. It actually traces it's lineage back to BSD, and has never had anything to do with Linux. They all have their roots in Unix, though Linux is more of a clone, since it's never had any of the original Unix source code applied to it.

The apps that work cross platform aren't 'Linux' apps, very few apps are Linux only. The majority of popular apps are ported between the architectures, so that I can run Gnome or KDE on pretty much any Unix. For the apps which aren't already ported, you have the option of compiling the source code yourself for your platform, if it's available.

Suffice it to say that OSX is not just Linux (or any form of Unix for that matter) that just happens to have a pretty shell.

renilcerym · 05-03-2009, 04:34 PM

Sorry. Actually I used to run Ubuntu Linux as my home system for nearly 3 years without ever having the need for another OS. I eventually broke down and bought an iMac about a year ago. I don't know, Perhaps I am still just used to making the impossible possible from the time I spent with Linux.

tiersten · 05-03-2009, 05:12 PM

LINA will allegedly allow you to run Linux apps on OSX (and others) but the latest release was years ago and nobody seems to use it now... There may be other compatibility layers out there that I don't know about or haven't found.

You can trying getting the Windows version of Packet Tracer working under OSX using Wine. *shrug*