Lab 1.1 Installing GNS3 - the virtual network simulator.

(Updated for RouterOS 7.0 / VirtualBox 7.x)

In this exercise, we are going to create a virtual network lab. In order to install the software and complete this lab, you'll need a Windows PC that meets the following minimum system requirements.

Why are we doing this? This software will allow you to simulate having an actual device and actual network setup as opposed to setting up a real test network with actual hardware. We wanted to give you the ability to see how the hardware operates without first having to make the investment in actual hardware. Also, this will give you the ability to perform some tasks that might be difficult to initially setup. We recommend performing these labs using a Microsoft Windows-based PC, but there are builds of the software for Mac-OS and Linux-based workstations, although the setup and configuration of those devices may differ from the step-by step instructions provided here.

OS: It should be at least Windows 7 64-bit.
Processor: You must have at least a dual-core processor.
RAM (Memory): 4 GB minimum
Disk Space: A minimum of 2GB of free disk space required.

Recommended:
OS: Windows 8, 10 or Windows 11 64-bit.
Processor: 4 or more logical processors. Core i7, i9, Ryzen 5 or 7 recommended.
RAM (Memory): 8GB is sufficient, but 16GB is recommended.
Disk Space: Minimum 2GB free disk space, SSD is recommended but not required.

The first piece of software we are going to install is GNS3, which is a graphical network simulator program that will allow us to simulate physical MikroTik device(s). Follow the steps below to install GNS3.

Step 1: You will need to create an account in order to download the GNS3 software. Please visit https://www.gns3.com/account/register and fill in the information on the page to create your account.

Step 2: Once you have registered your account, please login to the website. You can login by following the link here and will be required to login in order to download the required software.

Step 3: Once you are logged in, you will be redirected to the home page, https://www.gns3.com. Click the Free Download button.

Step 4: Once you are redirected to the download page, select the appropriate version of the software for your machine. We will be installing the Windows version for this demo. We recommend using a Windows based machine for the course and tutorials if possible because other tools that we will use during this course will require a Windows based PC. (You may find substitutes for some of the tools we use for the OS that you are on, but that is outside the scope of this lab.)

Step 5: Before we proceed with the install, we will also need to install Python if it is not already present on our machine. Python is required for our VirtualBox setup which we will be installing shortly. Proceed here to download and install Python
Download Python | Python.org. Download the latest version of Python listed.  

Step 6: Launch the Python installer and proceed with the installation.  I like to add python.exe to the PATH so that it makes it easier to find/launch python and also install with admin privileges.

Step 7: Now, open Powershell or CMD with administrator rights and execute the py -m pip install pywin32 command in the terminal to install pywin32.

Step 8: When encountering a new Pip update in the terminal, execute the command python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip to promptly update the package. After upgrading the existing pip tool, close the terminal and restart the system.

Step 9: In order to install and run the GNS3 VM component, you must install a hypervisor application – a tool that allows you to run virtual machines. We have chosen to use VirtualBox, a free hypervisor application provided by Oracle. At the next screen, we are going to pause the install of GNS3 until we complete the installation of VirtualBox. Click the link or navigate to https://www.virtualbox.org to download the VirtualBox application.

Step 10: Once you are redirected to the download page, select the appropriate version of the software for your machine. We will be installing the Windows version for this demo.

Step 11: Once the application has been downloaded to your machine, launch the installer application. Hit Next to continue.

Step 12: Select feature set for VirtualBox. It's recommended to leave everything as is and hit Next to continue.

Step 13: VirtualBox is requesting permission to install virtual network adapters to your machine. These virtual network adapters are attached to the VirtualBox hypervisor and are what allow your virtual machines local network access as well as access to the Internet. It is essential in order for VirtualBox and GNS3 to work, that these be installed. It will not alter your existing network settings and you will still be able to access the Internet once installed. Hit Yes to install the network interfaces.

Step 14: Once you have reached this point, you are ready to install VirtualBox onto your PC.  Once you hit the Install button, the software will then proceed to install onto the target machine.

Step 16: Once the software has finished installing, hit the Finish button to exit the Setup wizard. At this point, Oracle VirtualBox hypervisor software has been successfully installed onto the target machine and we can resume installing GNS3.

Step 17: Once VirtualBox has been installed, go back and launch the GNS3 installer. Close any other applications you may have open and click Next to continue.

Step 18: Accept the software license and hit I Agree

Step 19: Select the start menu folder to create the program's shortcuts. Its best to just accept the defaults and Hit Next

Step 20: You will be asked to choose which components to install. I like to install both the GNS3 WebClient and the GNS3 VM at this point. You will need the GNS3 VM, so its important that you install at least the VM. Hit Next to continue.

Step 21: Choose the installation location. (Default is usually recommended)

Step 22: Next you will be asked which VM you will be using to run GNS3. Choose VirtualBox as your VM and hit Install.

Once you hit install, GNS3 will be begin downloading and installing the necessary tools and files along with the GNS3 virtual machine.

Step 23: You will be required to install a few additional tools, the first of which is Npcap. Like us, you may have this tool already installed on your machine, or you may have a newer version of this tool installed on your machine. (The installer unfortuntely installs an older version of this tool and I recommend either updating the tool afterwards, or installing a newer version of the Npcap tool  from here (Npcap: Windows Packet Capture Library & Driver). Our recommendation is to pre-install the Npcap library and driver. Our test machine has a newer version of the tool installed, and so we answered this question with a No, do not install the older version of the software.

Step 24: The system will then install the necessary tools to complete the installation of GNS3 onto your workstation. Once completed, we will need one more piece of software, namely the RouterOS image for GNS3 in order to stand up a Mikrotik virtual device.  We will discuss installing and configuring the RouterOS image in the next segment of this installation.

You can choose to install optional tools post install if you'd like. I choose not to install.

Step 25: Installation is finished. Click Finish to launch GNS3.

The first time you launch GNS3 you will be presented with the GNS3 WebClient configuration. Just hit the Apply button and then close the window.

Step 26: Upon launching GNS3 you will be presented wit the Setup Wizard. We are going to run our devices in a virtual machine under VirtualBox so make sure Run appliances in a virtual machine is checked and then click Next to continue.

Step 27: Again, hit Next to accept the defaults.

Step 28: When you hit Next you will be presented wit the following image. It is safe to ignore as we will not be using VMWare to run our GNS3 VM. We will be using VirtualBox.

Step 29: You will see the following message in VirtualBox. This looks like a bug because as part of the original setup we asked it to install the VirtualBox GNS3 VM. Anyway, Lets go ahead and get this properly fixed.  We have to launch VirtualBox and download/import the *.ova file into VirtualBox. To download the file, click the link download it here.

Step 30: This will download the VirtualBox GNS3 appliance. Once the download has completed, extract the contents of the zip file to a folder and then open the VirtualBox app and import the *.ova file that was extracted. Hit Next to continue once you have located the file.

The new applicance will be imported with the following settings. Your settings may not necessarily look the same as the ones shown depending on what hardware you have installed. Click Finish to import the VM into VirtualBox.

After you click Finish you will see VirtualBox importing the appliance and it will soon show up in your list of images.

Step 31: Go back into GNS3 and hit the Refresh button. You should now see your imported GNS3 VM listed as shown. Hit Next to continue.

When you hit Next, the VirtualBox VM will start. Click Finish to close the GNS3 setup wizard.  

You should see in the Servers summary your GNS3 VM and Your Desktop running. If both are green, you have successfully installed GNS3 on your desktop. It is time now to install the Mikrotik RouterOS CHR in GNS3 so that we can create our virtualized devices.