VIRL tips

The VIRL website offers lots of great instruction and documentation. I also find the community generally offers quick and accurate help. I will not repeat the information already offered in those two places; however, here are some of the setups I use for the code in this book:

• VIRL uses two virtual Ethernet interfaces for connections. The first interface is set up as NAT for the host machine's Internet connection, and the second is used for local management interface connectivity (VMWare Fusion VMnet2 in the following example). I use a virtual machine with a similar network setup in order to run my Python code, with first Ethernet used for Internet and the second Ethernet connected to Vmnet2:

VMnet2 is a custom network created to connect the Ubuntu host with the VIRL virtual machine:

• In the Topology Design option, I set the Management Network option to Shared Flat Network in order to use VMnet2 as the management network on the virtual routers:

• Under the node configuration, you have the option to statically configure the management IP. I always statically set the IP address instead of what is dynamically assigned by the software, so I can easily get to the device without checking: