Leo didn't cheer. He moved with mechanical precision. He flashed the ISO to a USB, booted his bare-metal server, and watched the dark, green-text installer scroll by.
He watched the progress bar crawl. 50%... 75%... 95%...
All because of a 2.4 GB download at 2:48 in the morning. eve-ng download
All three nodes booted in under 11 seconds.
He tried GNS3. Too clunky. He tried Packet Tracer. Too limited. He needed something that could emulate a real Cisco router, a Palo Alto firewall, and a Linux server all at once, without begging for more RAM. Leo didn't cheer
He had one hour left. One hour before the corporate audit team landed in his inbox.
The website was bare bones. No fancy animations. Just a login, a forum, and a section labeled He watched the progress bar crawl
"To the audit team: Please find attached the full network topology, tested and verified in EVE-NG. No physical hardware required. See you at 9 AM."