How to Open ISO, BIN and IMG files on windows 8 10

How to OPen ISO file on windows 10:

ISO, .bin, .img, .daa, .dmg etc. are image file extensions and normally you can’t open these files without any additional software. There are many software for reading image files, most famous one are Nero, Power ISO and Alcohol.

Today I will show you how to open .iso and other image using Power ISO on windows 8 or on windows 7, also you can install Power ISO on XP. This is really easy, download Power ISO from internet. Just search in Google and you will find a download link easily. After download install and reboot your system.

After reboot you will find the logical or virtual DVD drive in My computer. Right click on virtual drive and click on Power ISO\ Mount image to drive. Then browser your required image file for example .iso, .img, .bin etc.

Power ISO will open the image file in this virtual DVD, also you can open the multiple image files by increasing the number of drives from set Number of Drives option.

Gns3 Error Failed to determine version of Dynamips Windows 8

Gns3 is not working on Windows 8:

When I start using GNS3-0.8.3.1-Standalone-64-bit on windows 8 64bit, I got the error “failed to determine version of Dynamips”. After long troubleshooting I am able to resolve this issue. I don’t know exactly why dynamips giving this message but from error wording it seems like that it is because of gns3 compatibly issue with windows 8.  

Anyway you can follow the below steps for resolving this issue.

1.       While troubleshooting with Dynamips.exe I notice that some .Dll files are missing on windows 8 in order to start Gns3 on windows 8. These are “Packet.dll” and “wpcap.dll” I copies these two files from my windows 7 machine to windows 8 and then test dynamips again and I got the positive result with message “Dynamips 0.2.8-RC3 successfully started “. You can download and copy these to files to C:\Windows\SysWOW64 on windows 8. If you have a windows 7 installed then you can also copy these two Dll files from same above location and can paste these into Windows 8.

Download Dll files Gns3

2.       Hope this will resolve your issue if not then you add gns3.exe and dynamips.exe to firewall allow applications from firewall setting and test again.

3.       Also try to run gns3.exe and dynamips.exe in windows 7 compatibility mode from properties\ compatibility tab.

Please share your experience if your issue is resolved also if you have same issue with dynamips then feel free to ask any question.

Gns3 installation on Windows 8

Gns3 Installation and Configuration on Windows 8

Last night I have successfully run GNS3 on Windows 8 (64 bit). Using and configuring GNS3 on Windows 8 64bit is really simple. You need to perform the following steps for installation:

·         Download “GNS3-0.8.3.1-Standalone-64-bit” from GNS3 official website www.gns3.net/download/ for your Windows 8 64bit edition.

·         This download file is a zip folder you can easy extract this by “winrar” to any location on your PC. 

·         Open the extracted folder and click on GNS3.exe to start using the GNS3.

GNS3 Configuration on Windows 8:

You need the same GNS3 configuration steps that you need on Windows 7 or other earlier versions of Microsoft.

1.       Open Dynamips setting from edit\preferences and from preferences menu select dynamips-tap and click on test settings and after few seconds it will show the message that “Dynamips 0.2.8-RC3 successfully started ”

You may get error of dynamips “failed to determine version of Dynamips” for solution you can following the link.

2.       For using Gns3 on Windows 8 and you also need some define some IOS for Routers, you can set the IOS in gns3 from IOS and hypervisors console. You can find this menu from “edit\ IOS and hypervisors console” and define IOS for GNS3 by browsing IOS file.

Once you have done above steps, GNS3 is ready for creating and simulating different labs. I have tested some simple Gns3 labs on Windows 8 and GNS3 works fine for me. Please share your experience of using GNS3 on Windows 8.

OSPF Design Guide | Open shortest path first CCNP Concepts

What is OSPF (open shortest path first)?

OSPF is define in RFC 2328 according to this Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is internet routing protocol.  OSPF is classified as an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP).  This means that it distributes routing information between routers belonging to a single Autonomous System.

OSPF is stands for Open shortest Path first. In Routing world by path selection there are two types of protocols.

1.       Link state routing protocols

2.       Distance vector routing protocol  

OSPF is a link state routing protocol, OSPF use SPF algorithm to find the best path. There are two versions for OSPF one is version 2 and other is version 3 which supports IPV6. OSPF is the most widely-used interior gateway protocol (IGP) in large enterprise networks. OSPF use the trigger update, mean whenever any change in network occur it converges on a new loop-free routing structure within seconds. OSPF use Dijkstra's algorithm to calculate shortest path.

OSPF Tables:

.. There are three tables in OSPF.

1.       Neighbor table

2.       Topology table

3.       OSPF Routing table

OSPF Cost:

What is OSPF cost?

OSPF metric is known as cost and OSPF Cost is the overhead required to send packets across a certain interface.

OSPF use the following formula for calculating cost for a link.

OSPF Cost=100 / (bandwidth in MB)

For more detail visit OSPF Cost.

OSPF neighbor relationship

Routers on the same network segment are called neighbors. Two routers connected with each other become neighbors if they have the same area-id, subnet, authentication and hello/dead intervals.

Neighbor process starts with hello packets. Hello packets are sent periodically out of each interface using IP multicast. Routers become neighbors as soon as they see themselves listed in the neighbor's Hello packet. Read more OSPFneighbor relationship

OSPF Network Types:

OSPF networks types is a big topic. There are following OSPF network Types.

1.       Broadcast/Multi-access Network

2.       OSPF Point to point

3.       OSPF Non-broadcast Multiaccess (NBMA)     

NBMA have five mode of working.

                                i.            Non-Broadcast (RFC Standard)

                              ii.            Point to Multipoint (RFC Standard)

                            iii.            Broadcast (Cisco Proprietary)

                             iv.            Point to point

                               v.            Point to point, Non Broadcast

Summarization in OSPF:

Summarization in OSPF is implemented on main routers like ABR & ASBR and also summary configuration is different for ABR and ASBR in OSPF.

On ABR you can use command

ABR#area 1 range 11.1.0.0 255.255.0.0

And on ASBR you need to use

ASBR# summary address 10.1.0.0 0.0.0.255  

OSPF LSA Types

LSAs are building block of OSPF. There are total 11 types of LSA.

1.       LSA Type-1| Router LSA from one network

2.       LSA Type-2| Network LSA from more network (DR Generated)

3.       LSA Type-3| Summary LSA (ABR summary Route)

4.       LSA Type-4| Summary LSA (just IP address of ASBR)

5.       LSA Type-5| External LSA (ASBR summary Route)

6.       LSA type-6 (not supported by Cisco)

7.       LSA type-7

Read more OSPF LSA Types

OSPF Virtual Link

In OSPF there is a basic requirement while designing a network with multiple areas that every area is directly connected to backbone area 0. Virtual link comes when some area e.g. area-2 in figure is not directly connected to area 0. There is area-1 in between area-2 and backbone area-0, so in this case communication between area-0 and area-2 is not possible. To make communication between these areas you need to create virtual-links.

How to create OSPF Virtual-links:

OSPF support different type of areas.

OSPF area Types

      Standard Area

      Backbone Area

      OSPF Stub area

      OSPF Totally stubby Area

      OSPF Not So stubby area

OSPF DR\BDR election:

To avoid the broadcast in network, in shared Ethernet segment DR are elected. DR send multicast to 224.0.0.4.

By default DR election base on router priority, router with high priority become DR  

How to configure OSPF on router

You can enable/configure OSPF on a router by following two methods.

·         Enable OSPF using network command in router process mode

·         Enable OSPF using IP OSPF command in interface mode

For more detail configure OSPF on router

OSPF Lab Examples:

OSPF single area configuration

OSPF Stub Area Sim configuration

OSPF Not So Stubby Area NSSAConfiguration

OSPF Stub Area Configuration

Tutorial OSPF point-to-multipoint configuration 

OSPF DR/BDR selection By Loopback Configuration

Learn about Cloud Computing and Active Directory

OSPF Area Types

What is OSPF Area?

OSPF allows collections of contiguous networks and hosts to be grouped together.  Such a group, together with the routers having interfaces to any one of the included networks, is called an area. (RFC 2823)

OSPF areas are logical groupings of routers and networks devices. Each area contains separate LSD (link state database) whose information may be summarized towards the rest of the network by the connecting router. In OSPF area is represented by 32 bit area identifiers. The topology of an area is unknown outside of the area. The advantages of an area is include

·         Less routing Traffic in an area

·         Less Router’s memory consumption

·         Less CPU utilization

·         Smaller routing tables

OSPF area Types

      Standard Area

      Backbone Area

      OSPF Stub area

      OSPF Totally stubby Area

      OSPF Not So stubby area

Standard Area

Normal area is known as Standard areas. This is basic types of area in OSPF. When you define an OSPF area with default setting e.g. which have no stub, backbone etc. is simply referred as standard area.

A standard area can contain LSAs of type 1,2,3,4, and 5.

Backbone Area

In OSPF area 0 is backbone area. A backbone area contains all the information of its connected areas. Backbone area is also responsible for distributing routing information to other area and to other automatous system connected to OSPF. All OSPF areas are must be connected to backbone area. This is basic requirement in OSPF, If this is not implemented then you need Virtual Links.

OSPF Stub area:

Stub area are good feature of OSPF, by using this you can minimize routing updates for a specific area and can make routing table smaller. OSPF stub Area block the external area route, block type-5 LSA for some area.

OSPF Stub area configuration:

For example in figure we want to make area-2 as stub so that R1 don’t receive any update of other areas but just a default route to R2. Following commands accomplish this goal. 

R1(config)#router ospf 1

R1(config-rtr)#area 2 stub

R2(config)#router ospf 1

R2(config-rtr)#area 2 stub

Read more for OSPF Stub Area Configuration

Totally stubby Area:

Totally stubby area is cisco proprietary and it blocks type 3, 4 and 5 LSA from entering into an area. Configurations are simple, you can see below.

R4(config-rtr)#area 1 stub no summary

R5(config-rtr)#area 1 stub

OSPF Not So stubby area:

NSSA is define in RFC 1587. A not-so-stubby area (NSSA) is a type of stub area that can import autonomous system external routes and send them to other areas. Since Type 5 LSAs are not allowed in NSSA areas, so the ASBR in NSSA generates a type 7 LSA instead, this type-7 LSA passes to backbone area and then converted back to types-5 LSA.

For more detail you can visit OSPF NSSA configuration.