Gambit Communications® provides network simulation tools that enhance the productivity and lower the costs of enterprise management.
Products:
MIMIC Virtual Lab Enterprise
MIMIC SNMP Agent Simulator
MIMIC IPMI Simulator
MIMIC Cable Modem Simulator
MIMIC IOS Simulator
https://www.gambitcomm.com/site/products/
MIMIC Virtual Lab - Enterprise
MIMIC Virtual Lab creates a real world lab environment with networks populated with devices from different manufacturers. It provides access to the devices--via SNMP, TFTP, Telnet and Cisco IOS® software--to evaluate new management products easily, yet exhaustively, prior to purchase and to customize them after purchase. MIMIC’s unique feature, “Test Exercises,” generates many real-world conditions, both negative and positive (heavily/lightly loaded networks, devices going up and down, trap storms, etc.), for a thorough test environment.
MIMIC provides a safe environment to practice that will not affect the production network. You don’t have to worry about testing scenarios that could bring down various devices or the entire network. In addition, you can save various configurations and changes to be used again later. This also makes it easier to train new hires. You can do all this without buying expensive equipment.
With Virtual Lab, you can create realistic simulations that will help to improve the management of your own network.
The Lab
Interact with the devices, such as routers and switches, just like real devices:
Load multiple labs, simulate them and switch between them;
LAN, WAN and Serial links; and,
Users can Telnet in to any of these devices from local or remote machines as if they are connecting to real devices. Any number of users can connect at a time. It fully supports SNMPv1, v2, v2c, v3; TFTP, Telnet and Cisco IOS® software.
Device Operations
Logging in/out;
Get into and out of different modes - User, Privileged, Configuration, Interface;
Set passwords, IP addresses, clock rates, hostname, bandwidth;
Assign routing protocols - RIP, IGRP;
Ping other devices on the network;
Save/load configurations;
Boot using flash or TFTP protocol;
Configuration of CDP, PPP, Frame Relay and OSPF protocols; and,
Many other fuctions.
Lab Operations
Start/Stop devices, individually or in a group;
Save/Load a configuration of the network;
MIB Browswer to view MIB information for an individual device;
View the individual device or the entire topology configruation information;
Troubleshoot;
View the topology with connections and addresses;
Open Telnet sessions; and
Context sensitive help.
You can also discover and cofigure using management applications such as HP OpenView, CA Unicenter, CiscoWorks, CiscoWorks 2000, CiscoView and CEMF (CDM, GSR Manager), just like real devices.
If you are interested in creating your own devices and topology, MIMIC Simulator tool kit is also available. You can simulate as many as 10,000 devices in a lab. It includes MIMIC Recorder to record devices to help create the lab topology you need.
Exercises
Each lab comes with a set of test exercises, which let you create many pathological conditions in your simulated network. These are test conditions that would commonly be performed while evaluating or testing network management applications.
Some of the sample exercises for networks are:
Heavily loaded network with many port activities;
Lightly loaded network with less activity;
Router (or sub-net) down, which generates many other actions;
Trap storm, which causes many MIB variables to increase significantly for multiple devices at the same time;
Random increases and decreases in the MIB variables (In, Out and Error octets) periodically (30 second interval); and,
Devices going down and coming up -- several devices issue Link Up/Down traps at the same time.
Some of the sample exercises for devices are:
Device down;
Interface down;
Port parameters increment significantly;
Heavily loaded device with packet drops or delays;
Lightly loaded device;
Periodic change in load -- high/medium/light;
Trap storm;
Configruation changes: device configuration variables, such as IP address and Mask;
Printer device: paper out trap; and,
Bad link -- packet drops every fifty packet.
Customization
MIMIC Virtual Lab - Enterprise can be customized to meet your specific needs, including branding and localization. Below is an example of a Chinese language version of MIMIC Virtual Lab.
If you are interested in creating your own devices and topology, MIMIC Simulator tool kit is also available. You can simulate as many as 10,000 devices in a lab. It includes MIMIC Recorder to record devices from any manufacturer to help create the lab topology you need
This Software is very good in Lab testings and artificial simulations for Routers,Switches,Firewall(CISCO,Juniper,etc) equipments before you implement actual network for an organistaions
They had a good feature for to communicate those actual(hardware) Routers with this simulated Networks (software)
IOS can be extracted and configured (SETUP/PRIVILEDGE/CONFIG Modes) of devices
