Interesting Times

I am interested in how others have managed through the pandemic and what cool / interesting solutions you've implemented to solve some of the longer term challenges. For me, it was establishing layer 3 connectivity between on prem lab, and my "remote work" lab at home. Using GNS3, I setup a virtual router on my laptop, configured a router inside our lab as a DMVPN3 hub and now anytime I fire up the VPN and my GNS3 lab project, I am able to establish connectivity between our on prem lab and the one I built at home. I know there are other easier ways of establishing this but this one had 2 unique features First was the low cost. For me it was free since i was able to reuse physical gear as necessary. The second was the low risk. I didn't have to poke any additional holes in the firewall or standup any separate WAN segment since the transport is our corporate VPN, connecting directly into a lab network segment.

Below is a high level overview:

At home

Dell work laptop with corporate VPN(Palo Alto global protect)

GNS3 2800 series router on my laptop

GNS3 NAT connection to my VPN NiIC

USB NIC for wired connection to Cisco 3560cx switch

GNS3 Cloud connection using the USB NIC for physical connect to Switch

Using basic VRFs / DMVPN spoke / to establish tunnel to on prem lab

At Work

2900 series router

configured as DMVPN hub,

phase 3(default route only)

EIGRP