Test Dynamips Path to Start Working with GNS3

Graphical Network Simulator or GNS3 is an upgraded and GUI version of Dynamips. Dynamips was the very first invention in the arena of virtual routing. When GNS3 was not invented it was Dynamips which was used by the students to practice for their examinations. However Dynamips was not very user friendly and if users want to learn and practice on the application students were required to have good understanding and practice of CLI as the application only offered command line interface to the users to work with. Even today when a user starts GNS3 GNS3 runs Dynamips in the background and only because of this users are able to work with the application. However when the application is installed for the very first time users manually need to tell GNS3 about Dynamips executable file before they can start using the software. In order to do so they need to test the application path from within the application itself. This is although one-time process that users need to perform before using the application for the very first time but still the process is not automatic and the path is required to be tested manually. After the installation if you want to test Dynamips path you need to follow the steps given below.

1. Open GNS3 application from the start menu and from the opened console click on Edit menu.

2. From the appeared list click on Preferences and from the opened box in the left pane click on Dynamips.

3. From the right pane make sure that you are on Dynamips tab and under Executable path make sure that the correct path to Dynamips executable file is selected. (If you are using Windows XP or Windows 7 32-bit version you need not to modify the path. However if you are using Windows 7 64 bit edition you need to browse and locate the file which by default is installed in Program Files (X86)GNS3Dynamips folder.

4. Once done click on Test button to test the path.

5. Once the path is successfully tested you will be displayed with a green notification next to Test button and your next step will be to click on Ok button.