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Router on a floppy disk

Solution:  freesco (free Cisco - I guess?)

Issue:  When I am working on some topology design and especially when using AD... I like to have my development area segmented from anything else that it may impact.  On my laptop I use DHCP on either em1 or wlan0 with your standard 192.x.x.x address.

To segment my development I use a "Host-Only" network, which has changed a bit with VMware Workstation 8 for Linux (not sure about the Windows version).  They now offer Host-Only and another option "LAN Segment".  I'm not sure what the limitation for these LAN Segments are.  But I currently have 3 configured.  I like this option as I believe it will be extremely useful testing cluster configs (for the LLT networks).

When I use freeSCO - I do the following:
download the freeSCO source and untar it (currently 0.4.3)
Create a virtual machine using "Other Linux 2.2.x Kernel" and 512 MB (proceed with defaults for the remainder)
remove the hard disk, USB, printer
make the "primary NIC" bridged (I imagine you could use NAT also)
add another NIC and assign it to a LAN segment (you will need to add a new segment)
# dd if=./freesco.043 of=/VirtualMachines/freeSCO-043/floppy.vfd
configure your VM to use the floppy.vfd as the floppy image

Boot and you should be on your way.  The remainder of the configuration tasks I will leave to the experts and their docs.  (I have little experience with freeSCO other than this extremely limited purpose - therefore, you should probably use their docs)

http://www.freesco.org/

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