I don't know of any cases of Cisco taking legal action to enforce their intellectual property rights against a re-seller and I'd be very surprised if they took exception to someone using their software in a 'virtual' GNS3 environment. Of course there are dozens of Cisco re-sellers that sell used gear and those that do it the official Cisco way (sending the equipment back to Cisco for official re-licensing and charging again for the licensing) are obviously at a serious pricing disadvantage.

I expect the automobile manufacturer's lawyer wasn't a software licensing specialist and used a lot of boiler plate text from somewhere else without actually realizing the real implications. That said, I carefully reviewed the license for the software that makes my car work and it's not transferable either so in some cases buying a used car is just as illegal (technically - no court would ever entertain that you did something illegal with regard to software licensing in buying a used car). And they're available inexpensively or even free.īuying used gear is most often technically just as illegal as grabbing the images from some file sharing site because the licenses are not transferable. There are a lot of switches, routers, and firewalls out there that, although not the latest, are still quite functional. If your goal is to run GNS3, then you need to get the IOS images in an appropriate way.īut, if you're trying to work with a lab setup, consider getting the actual physical gear.

Cisco 1700 ios image download for gns3