I'm glad you confirmed that so that's fantastic news. So in other words, someone who downloads CML gets it for free, can run 5 devices and it's the actual devices that they would encounter in the exam, right? Correct. Yep. Hey everyone, it's David Bombal back with Justin from the CML team.

Justin is one of the core developers of CML and at Cisco Live, we hinted about something that's coming that's really really cool. Justin, great to have you back on the show. Thanks for having me, David. And big thanks to Cisco for sponsoring this video and also making education much more affordable and

available for more people to change their lives. So Justin, you got to, you know, tell people what's this huge announcement that's going to change I think the lives of a lot of people. So the big announcement is we finally have a free tier. That's brilliant. So in other words, I can download and run

CML or Cisco Modeling Labs for free on my laptop as an example, right? Correct. Without any license, just out of the box, you can install it and get up and running. But are there any like caveats or like restrictions or is it like the everything in the product? Big limitation is you have 5 concurrent

nodes that you can run and it's uh single user only. And is it any specific types of devices? Is it like IOL or is it like um some IOSv? What kind of devices can I use? So there's two files that

you would use to get CML up and running. There's the OVA file which contains CML itself and then there's a ISO file which contains the reference platforms. Uh, the free tier will give you access to IOL, uh a router version. They're IOL XE, so a router version and a switch version. You also have the

Linux, um, uh, Linux Ubuntu nodes and you also have have ASAv. Okay, hold on a minute so I can get ASAv so I can do firewalls. Right, I've got IOL which gives me a router and a switch so I can build like a whole bunch of topologies in, I sorry, in CML for free but limited to five devices, right? Correct. And you can also, if you have access to other reference platforms, you can import those and run those as well. We just don't ship those with a free version. So when you say a reference

platform, what is that? What, what does that mean? Is that like an ISO that just has like all the images of the devices? Reference platform is a virtual representation of a physical device, so it would be a router, firewall, switch. So in other words, I could like on the full version or the paid version

if you like of CML, I could import other vendor devices as an example or like different types of like, um, PC type devices, right? Correct. I mean you can do that with the free version as well. We just don't ship with those. If you have the paid version, we ship with a router set of reference

platforms as part of that, uh, subscription. Okay, so the limitations are, it's limited to 5 concurrent devices. Does that include, is that just the routers and switches, or does that also include like the Linux devices? That's everything except for the external connector and unmanaged switches.

Those two device types, you can have an unlimited amount. I think this is fantastic for CCNA, right? So for CCNA, if I'm learning about Cisco devices, the huge advantage of CML is that these IOL devices and perhaps you can give us more details about IOL, but just before we get there, they, this will allow

me to build a topology to study for free for CCNA
as an example with routers and switches. Correct. Yeah, you can get in there, you can build uh some smaller
topologies, get familiar with things like DHCP or Spanning Tree, you just get familiar with the intro
Concepts to networking. So what, what is IOL actually?

So IOL is a uh it's a process based application
so it's not a full virtual machine um but it's very, very lightweight and what we ship with is a
representation of the iOS XE um so think like CSR 1000b, so a representation of that um it doesn't do
like full packet forwarding as far as speed-wise

but it, it does allow you to do a majority of the
commands that you would have on a real router or real switch. But I think is really amazing about
this in the CCNA exam, I believe the devices that are used in the simulations are are actually IOL
type devices, so if someone's setting for the CCNA

exam, I mean this is like having a real device
that you're going to encounter in the exam, correct? It's exactly what you used uh inside the CCNA exam
I'm glad you confirmed that, so that's fantastic news, so in other words, someone who downloads CML
gets it for free, can run five devices and it's the

actual devices that they would encounter in the
exam right? Correct, yep. That's fantastic news, so Justin, the big question obviously is where do I get it
uh, can you give me some links that I can put in the video description or something that people can
go and download it. Yeah, I'll give you links in the

description um but it's going to be available uh
on Cisco website via guest access, so anybody that has a Cisco account can get in there and download
the OVA and the reference platform. That's huge because in other words, I don't have to be working
for a partner right, if I'm a student, I could

download this and start studying for free. Correct.
yeah and one of the other nice things I want to mention is the software that you would be running
as part of this free tier is the same software that you would have for the paid subscription so
if you do like the product if you do want more

than 5 nodes you can simply buy a uh license
and input that into the same software and it'll upgrade to the Personal Edition or Enterprise
Edition if you go that route. Okay so that's great so in other words I don't have to reinstall
it right it's just a simply a license that

unlocks new features type of thing. Correct. Yep. Well
that's huge so just for people who don't know, what is CML actually? So Cisco Modeling Labs is a
uh virtualization platform that allows you to run

virtual representation of routers and switches uh
you're actually moving packets around so that's one of the uh I guess important topics around CML
is that you are getting familiar with the devices
and you are moving packets um between devices and
you can also move those packets to real devices in

the real world we have this concept of external
connector with that you can link the virtual devices running inside of Cisco Modeling Labs with
devices in the real world. I mean it's essentially a real device it's just a virtualized device right?
It's yeah it's a real device I mean there are

some limitations because you are doing stuff in
software that's typically done in hardware I mean that's so certain features might not be available
for the most part they are but there's certain limitations that you'll run into depending on the
platform around things like QoS or stuff that's

very deep in the hardware of the Virtual Router
or switch. But I think from a studying point of
view if you want to learn the CLI if you want to
like actually interact with real virtual devices
this is the this is the platform to get. Correct
and not just for studying I mean we have a lot

of use cases for very large you know Fortune
500 companies that are using this to replicate
their real production networks so if they want
to push out a change they can push it out into
CML validate that the change is correct and that
they don't have any issues um and then after they

validate that they push it into production. Yeah
I mean that's a good point I mean there's 3
versions now of CML is that right there the free
tier there's the personal and Enterprise is that
is that correct? uh there's technically a couple
more I mean that's the high level but there's two

versions of personal there's personal and personal
plus and then for enterprise we also have uh the
student um teacher edition as well or education
Edition. That's fantastic but I think for a lot of
people watching this is huge news because they can
download this for free and run it and study but

also I mean you said packets right so I'm assuming
the free tier also does Wireshark captures where
you can actually capture the traffic on links? Yeah
you can capture any link inside a CML you can uh
select it and run a packet capture and see those
packets in real time um kind of a summary of those

but you can also download those in Wireshark
if you want to do a full-on packet analysis so.
I mean I think we've been talking enough I think
it's huge news for everyone watching but can you
show us kind of like what it looks like perhaps
show your desktop. Okay so for those users that

If you're new to CML, this is the dashboard view. This is what you would see upon logging into CML for the first time. I have a couple of labs here that I've created and you can either add a new lab or you

can import an existing YAML file uh lab. If I click on this lab that I have running here, I have an IOL router, an IOL switch and a couple of PCs as far as the different node types. This is what you would see

with the free tier that you would have installed by default. So we have an external connector that gets you to the outside world. We have an ASAv, so a firewall, IOL router, uh a couple of Linux uh nodes, so we have a desktop server, just a regular Ubuntu node. We have the IOL layer 2 switch and then we

have the unmanaged switch. An unmanaged switch is just a way to connect multiple devices into that, and then um you can you can share that. So if I had you know multiple links, I could bring them into here and this is a just a essentially a hub if you will. There's no there's nothing you can configure on

it. Justin, I've seen this on other platforms that people have, you have to go through a bunch of hoops to get stuff working on XYZ platform and I won't mention names. The advantage of CML right is it all comes with that reference platform stuff, so when you install it, all that stuff's ready to

go right, you don't have to like try and download and import weird stuff or upload stuff. Is that correct? Correct, and I'll also point out that you are entitled to use that as well. There's been a lot of misconception over the years but yeah, you get, not only do you get access to the

images as far as them running inside of CML, but
you have full entitlement from Cisco to use those images inside of Cisco Modeling Labs. Yeah, I mean so it's
important that we highlight that this when you you you're legally allowed to use these images
where where you use other people's platforms

that's you you it's not actually allowed by the
license, correct? Correct. So that's really important to highlight, so I think from people who's who's
studying or people who are trying to set this up in bigger um environments have got to pay license
you are buying the license to use the software

so you're not breaking any licensing issues or any
problems or laws or whatever. You have the right to use it, so I'm glad you highlighted that. So sorry I
interrupted your flow. Go on. So here we have a lab uh router, switch, couple of computers. If we wanted
to do something like a packet capture, we can, right

click on a link, and then we have this pane view
down here, and the pane view is how you get on consoles of devices. It's how you get to packet
capture. It's how you would get uh to VNC uh for

a graphical interface. There's also several other
ways which we won't go in the video of getting on consoles. Um, I can do a packet capture here. I
can see some STP packets going uh in between the devices. I can see some ICMP packets. If you click
on these, you can drill down in further detail

um, if you want to really analyze the packets and
if you want to get the full-on Wireshark packet capture, you can click download and that'll open
in Wireshark on your local machine. If we want to get on a console device, we can right click
on a node, we can pull up console. We have access

to the console we can configure it just like we
would a normal device if we want to do another
device console we can open that and we get on that
device if we want to do split screen so we want
to see both at the same time we can add a new pane
and from there we can see both up at the same time

or if you want to see packet capture you can do
that so this pane view is multi-tab per pane and
then you could add multiple pane so you can kind
of slice it up the way you want and. I mean if you

just type like show run or something that's just
like a like you said it's like a normal device
right and what they're going to see in the exam
so question mark works, tab works it's literally
like a real device. Correct yes so this would
be identical to what you would see in the lab

that's great from a user from a user functionality
perspective configurations and everything would
be different. What about those PCs can you click
on one of those is that just like a Linux device
right yeah. So you can get uh either console or
you can get BNC so we have a graphical interface

probably a little bit hard to see on the video but
we can zoom in a little bit and yeah you can log
into this and configure it just like a normal PC
to add a new device we go to this add nodes pane
up here and this is a drag and dropped drag and
drop menu or there a bulk option as well which can

add multiple devices at the same time but for this
demo we'll show you dragging and dropping so we
drag hold let go where we wanted on the canvas and
then if we want to add a link we can right click
on this node add link drag it into an existing
node we can see here that this is showing red

because there's no more interfaces available on
this so we wouldn't be able to add it here but if
we add it into the switch we can add that um and
then if we want to start it we can right click and
hit start yeah you saw there for a second let me
see if I can do that again let me stop it so if

you have this icon it means that it's been started
in the past if we start it you'll see quickly that
there was a little time icon and I point that
out because one of the nice things about Cisco
modeling Labs is it does make sure that the
resources are available before starting nodes

um so it whenever you start a node it goes into
a queue system and make sure that those resources are
available so you don't end up in a situation where
it tries to start the node and then you run out of
memory or run out of CPU and then the device fails
so we do try to do um some intelligent starting of

nodes and then additional one nice thing is
once you get a little bit deeper in Cisco modeling
Labs you can see these check marks and the check
marks uh validates that the device is booted and
running which is important because once you start
getting into APIs and Automation and you get down

that path you can validate or ensure that the
devices are running and ready to receive any
type of commands so you're not trying to shove a
config at a device that's you know is not ready to
receive it so that's an important distinction with
Cisco modeling Labs. So show me how do you set up

brand new uh lab so do I just shut this one
down and then like create a new lab? yeah so
I won't shut it down just to show you kind of the
limitation what happens if you do try to run more

than 5 because we are running 5 nodes and
the limitation for free tier is 5 concurrent
nodes so if I start or if I add a new lab I go
back to the dashboard I click add I have this
blank canvas so from here I can click up the add
nodes drag some nodes onto the canvas and then I

can either there's multiple ways to start it you
can right-click on them you can go to lab start lab
which will start all of the devices inside the lab
I'll go ahead and do that so you'll see that it
throws an error because we're already running 5
nodes so that's the max licenses that are in use

so we'd have to go back to the dashboard and stop
this existing lab and now if we come in here and
start the lab they'll start. That's an important
distinction right it's not like you're limited to
5 devices in your entire CML setup right it's
only 5 running at the same time? correct yeah.

I think it's important to highlight that because
otherwise you know there might be confusion that
we're only allowed to have a topology of well
in the whole system only like 5 devices but
I mean you can I have unlimited devices but only
five booted up at the same time yeah and you could

have as many Labs as you want as well so if you
had like this this could be a CCNA lab going over
Spanning Tree this could be a CCNA lab going over
something completely different and you could have
those you can start this one and when you're done
and you want to switch to a different one uh you

could stop stop that one and then switch over to
the other one and start that to play around with
that lab. So Justin what happens if I want to
upgrade yeah let's say my company gives me a
license so they they they buy a license is like
what's the process to upgrade? So you wouldn't

have to upgrade the software what you would do
is you would get that license code and you would come into tools and Licensing and then you would
choose the product configuration so you know by default it does run in free tier uh which is the
5 running devices you would come in here and

select the license that you have you would save
that and then you would register and then type in your product registration token and that would
get you registered another thing worth out is once your license expires because typically uh at
least personal Edition is registered on a 365 day

basis when that license does expire uh in previous
versions it would stop working entirely um but now with the free tier it will revert back to the
free tier and give you those 5 nodes. It means that it's not unusable like perhaps in the past I
can carry on doing Labs but just limited to 5

devices that's great so Justin just for people who
don't know perhaps you can just walk us through the different licenses you kind of mention them
but like I see there's multiple personal licenses yeah what are the differences? Yes personal license
gives you access to 20 nodes um and personal plus

this is this one here that's 40 nodes um when
you get into Enterprise it gives you a node count based on the license level that you have so that
can uh extend up to 320 nodes currently and then education is limited on a per user basis so that
one's unlimited nodes but license on a per user

basis and Enterprise also has additional features
like LDAP support so if you have like active directory you can use that as a u authentication
store um that gives you clustering as well so we can uh horizontally uh scale up to 8
compute nodes and all that is done seamlessly

so you can have much larger labs running and
have all the backend connection between nodes and interfaces and links all that done um behind
the scenes. Personal licenses you only have like 1 VM kind of thing is that right? Personal is
limited to one yeah there's no clustering and it

is limited to one user as well. Personal license
so you can't have multi users logged in at the same time. So Justin this is fantastic news about
the free version of CML but I believe you've also got some other great news. Yeah so for this video
we're going to be giving away 10 personal licenses

of Cisco Modeling Labs. And that means that people
that win those get access to additional devices right so they get IOSv a whole bunch of other
devices as well right? Correct and they would be able to run up to 20 devices with that license. So
for everyone who's watching use the link below to

enter and hopefully you'll win one of 10 licenses. Justin this is fantastic and I'm really glad that
Cisco have done this uh I know this is something that you and Ralph have been hoping to you know have for a long time so I'm really glad that
this has happened. Just for everyone who's watching

please put your comments below any questions that
you have and hopefully I can get Ralph or Justin to come back and talk or I'll be able to answer
those questions and perhaps create more content. Justin any final words? Really want to thank you
you know for sharing this. No thanks for having me.

Massive News! Free Network Simulation Tool for Everyone! (Cisco CML)

Want to learn about IT? Want to get ahead in your career?  Well, this is the right place!

On this channel, I discuss Linux, Python, Ethical Hacking, Networking, CCNA, Virtualization and other IT related topics.

This YouTube channel has new videos uploaded every week! Subscribe for technical, detailed, no fluff content.

All the best!
David 


Massive News! Free Network Simulation Tool for Everyone! (Cisco CML)

Massive News! Free Network Simulation Tool for Everyone! (Cisco CML)

Scripts