GNS3 Launches Version 2.0

cobrien1 over 6 years ago 3 minute read time

Version 2.0 is a new major release of GNS3, which brings significant architectural changes and new features to the growing community of over 900,000 registered network professionals. Since inception of the project GNS3 has made over 79 releases and been downloaded over 13,693,000 times.

GNS3 started as only a desktop application from the first version up to version 0.8.3. With the more recent 1.x versions, GNS3 has grown to now allow for the use of remote servers. Within version 2.0, multiple clients can control GNS3 at the same time, also all the “application intelligence” has been moved to the GNS3 server.

What does it mean?

Third parties can make applications controlling GNS3. This will also allow individuals to easily configure and spin up a virtual network with pre-established templates
Multiple users can be connected to the same project and see each other modifications in real time, allowing individuals in remote location to work and collaboration on projects in the GNS3 virtual network environment
No need to duplicate your settings on different computers if they connect to the same central server.
Easier to contribute to GNS3, the separation between the graphical user interface and the server/backend is a lot clearer
GNS3 now supports the following vendor devices: Arista vEOS, Cumulus VX, Brocade Virtual ADX, Checkpoint GAiA, A10 vThunder, Alcatel 7750, NetScaler VPX, F5 BIG-IP LTM VE, MikroTik CHR, Juniper vMX and more....

All the complexity of connecting multiple emulators has been abstracted in what we call the controller (part of GNS3 server). From a user point of view, it means that it is possible to start a packet capture on any link, connect anything to a cloud etc. Finally, by using the NAT object in GNS3, connections to Internet work out of the box (note this is only available with the GNS3 VM or on Linux with libvirt installed).

Get started with GNS3 v2.0 now!

NEW FEATURES DETAILS

Save as you go

Your projects are automatically saved as you make changes to them, there is no need to press any save button anymore. An additional benefit is this will avoid synchronization issues between the emulators’ virtual disks and projects.

Multiple users can be connected to the same project

Multiple user can be connected to the same project and see each other changes in real time and collaborate. If you open a console to a router you will see the commands send by other users.

Smart packet capture

Now starting a packet capture is just as easy as clicking on a link and asking for new capture. GNS3 will guess the pick the best interface where to capture from. The packet capture dialog has also been redesigned to allow changing the name of the output file or to prevent automatically starting Wireshark:

NEW API

Developers can find out how to control GNS3 using an API here: http://api.gns3.net/en/2.0/ Thanks to our controller, it is no longer required to deal with multiple GNS3 servers since most of the information is available in the API. All the visual objects are exposed as SVG.

Key Videos on GNS3 v2.0

This video explains and demonstrates how to upgrade both the GNS3 Windows GUI and the GNS3 VM to version 2.0.0 of GNS3. This video uses Windows 10 for the demonstrations.

More helpful videos on GNS3 v2.0:

GNS3 Launches Version 2.0

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