Breakout Tool Overview

The Breakout Tool gives you local access to consoles and graphical interfaces of VMs running in a remote lab. The telnet protocol is used for console access, and VNC protocol is used for graphics-capable VMs. The Breakout Tool is a single executable file that you run on the command line. It provides an encrypted channel from the local machine, where the tool has been configured and started, to the nodes in the lab simulation.

Once you download the tool, you can configure it using its web interface that is accessible via the localhost (i.e., 127.0.0.1or [::1]) or loopback address on port 8080 by default. The port and listen address and the CML server’s URL can be also configured via command line options or the tool’s configuration file (config.yaml). Using the Breakout Tool, you can use your favorite terminal emulator app to connect to your nodes’ consoles on configurable local ports.

If you have installed WireShark to your local machine, you can also use the Breakout tool to stream packet captures into WireShark instances that the tool launches and connects with.