Licences and notices

Last updated 24 September 2026

ZNetLab is proprietary software: Copyright © 2026 ZNetLab. All rights reserved. Its simulator engine, lab platform, text, device icons, hardware drawings and other artwork are original work made for ZNetLab; no vendor icon set or artwork is used, traced or copied.

ZNetLab includes or loads the third-party components below. Each is used under its own licence, which is reproduced or linked here.

Appliance files and platform data

A .gns3a appliance file is somebody else's work: besides the hardware settings it carries their description, usage notes and installation instructions, their choice of which appliances to list, a link to a vendor's logo and a maintainer's name. The ones commonly found on a lab server carry no licence granting redistribution.

ZNetLab does not redistribute them. The image library on a server — including its appliances folder — is not part of this product; whatever is in it are the administrator's own copies on their own machine, and ZNetLab reads them where they are, the way it reads the images beside them.

And it does not depend on them. ZNetLab's own catalogue holds the hardware facts a platform needs in order to run — memory, CPUs, NIC model, disk bus, interface naming — and the size and MD5 of images present on that server, measured there by reading the files. No checksum is copied from anywhere: hashing the same bytes anywhere gives the same answer, which is what makes it a measurement rather than a quotation. No description, usage text, installation note, logo, documentation link, maintainer name or list of appliances is taken from anybody. Where a line of explanation appears on screen, it is written in ZNetLab's own words.

Product names — Cisco, Fortinet, Juniper, Firefox and the rest — are used only to say which software an image is, and are the trademarks of their owners. No vendor's icon set, logo or artwork is used, traced or copied anywhere in this product.

Photographs

The banners on articles, blog posts and labs are drawn by ZNetLab, over a photograph. Every photograph comes from Wikimedia Commons and is public domain, CC0, or CC BY. Nothing here is share-alike, non-commercial or no-derivatives: a licence that reaches into the work it is combined with is not one this product can take on for a decorative image, and the other two we are not entitled to use at all.

CC BY asks for attribution. That is the table below, and it is generated from assets/photos/credits.json by tools/fetch-photos.js, so a photograph cannot be added without its credit arriving with it.

Subject	Photograph	By	Licence
`acl`	Technician with laptop working on server rack at NERSC	Derrick Coetzee from Berkeley, CA, USA	CC0
`automation`	Data Center (22370911658)	Carl Lender from Sunrise, USA	CC BY 2.0
`capture`	Screenshots of the Wireshark interface, showing captured packets data - DNS	Oluwatobi TJ	CC0
`dns`	NOIRLab HQ Server Racks (6V6A0404-CC)	NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/T. Slovinský	CC BY 4.0
`etherchannel`	EthernetSwitch	Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine	CC0
`fabric`	UPS Power Management Module, racks with network cabling in NERSC data center	Derrick Coetzee from Berkeley, CA, USA	CC0
`fhrp`	Server Cabinet (25680506307)	Simeon W from Wellington, New Zealand	CC BY 2.0
`firewall`	US Army using NIKSUN Appliance 2016	Staff Sgt. Ashley M. Cohen, 35th Signal Brigade (Theater Tactical) Public Affairs, US Army	Public domain
`ipv6`	Close-up of a network interface card under colorful lighting highlighting its design and functionality	Shixart1985	CC BY 2.0
`mtu`	Stecker RJ45 568B	Markus Bärlocher	CC0
`nat`	TP-Link TL-WR740N router HS2	Hayden Schiff	CC BY 4.0
`ospf`	ALMA fibre optic patch panel (alma aos mar2009-1815)	ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)	CC BY 4.0
`qos`	Biswarup Ganguly photographing Dr. Tanmay Bir from the monitor screen during 7th Annual General Meeting of West Bengal Wikimedians User Group held at BITM, Kolkata on 21 Dec 2025	Kingshuk Mondal	CC BY 4.0
`redistribution`	Network core routers (14072890862)	Patrick Finnegan from Lafayette, IN, USA	CC BY 2.0
`routing`	Cisco 2800 series router (1)	Robert	CC BY 2.0
`sdwan`	Radio tower, Japan; May 2016 (02)	acopbc	CC0
`stp`	Network switches arranged in a server rack with visible LED lights indicating connection status and power levels	Shixart1985	CC BY 2.0
`subnetting`	UPS Power Management Module, iDataPlex racks with network cabling in NERSC data center (2)	D Coetzee	CC0
`switching`	DiGiGrid DLS on Avid HD Omni - networking hub interface with built-in SoundGrind DSP server, network switch, 2 DigiLink ports (up to 64 audio inputs & outputs) - 2014 NAMM Show (by Matt Vanacoro)	Matt Vanacoro	CC BY 2.0
`telecom`	Moscow, VDNKh telephone exchange, power equipment (10656699616)	Gennady Grachev from Moscow, Russia	CC BY 2.0
`vlan`	PATCH PANEL - TRANSDUCERS - 2 RAKES MOUNTING BOARDS - DPLA - 8c9001a6da323dcc30d55757a3a39588	Martin Brown	Public domain
`wireless`	Access-point-wireless	Rodrigo César	Public domain

Third-party components

Component	Used for	Licence	Copyright
React 18.3.1 `learn/assets/vendor/react.min.js`	The teaching site and the simulator's user interface	MIT (below)	Meta Platforms, Inc. and affiliates
ReactDOM 18.3.1 `learn/assets/vendor/react-dom.min.js`	Rendering React into the page	MIT (below)	Meta Platforms, Inc. and affiliates
Modernizr 3.0.0pre (custom build, bundled inside react-dom)	Browser feature detection inside ReactDOM	MIT	Modernizr contributors
Poppins	Interface font, everywhere on the site	SIL Open Font License 1.1	Indian Type Foundry
JetBrains Mono	Console and code font	SIL Open Font License 1.1	The JetBrains Mono Project Authors
Natural Earth 1:110m land `assets/worldmap.js`	The outline of the world on the sign-in analytics map, projected and simplified into one SVG path. No map service is contacted: the map is a string in that file	Public domain	naturalearthdata.com
OpenStreetMap map tiles `assets/tilemap.js`	The detailed map an administrator may switch on for the sign-in screen, instead of the outline above. Off by default. While it is on, that administrator's browser fetches tile images from `tile.openstreetmap.org`; the attribution the licence requires is rendered on the map itself and is not optional. The slippy-map code is ZNetLab's own — no third-party mapping library is used anywhere in this product	Map data ODbL 1.0 tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors	openstreetmap.org/copyright
Product analytics	Counted by this server, from `assets/hit.js` on its own pages. There is no third-party analytics script anywhere in ZNetLab, no cookie and no identifier stored in any browser — so nothing here loads from, or reports to, anybody else. `--no-analytics` switches the counting off	—	ZNetLab
ip-api.com (service, not code)	Turning a public sign-in address into a place, when the administrator opens sign-in analytics. Each address is asked about once and cached on your server; private addresses are never sent. `--no-geoip` switches it off	Free endpoint, non-commercial terms	ip-api.com

The three fonts are not shipped with ZNetLab; they are loaded from Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com) when a page opens. The SIL Open Font License 1.1 is published at https://openfontlicense.org.

MIT License (React, ReactDOM)

MIT License Copyright (c) Meta Platforms, Inc. and affiliates. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Modernizr is distributed under the same MIT licence text, with the copyright line "Copyright (c) Modernizr contributors".

Vendor software and trademarks

ZNetLab ships no vendor software. Network operating-system images used on the Real labs platform are supplied by the user or administrator, who is responsible for holding a licence for them. The browser simulator reimplements protocol behaviour and an IOS-style and Junos-style command line; it contains no vendor code.

Cisco, IOS, Catalyst, Meraki, Packet Tracer, CCNA, CCNP, CCIE, Juniper, Junos, Arista, EVE-NG, GNS3, Wireshark, SecureCRT, PuTTY and other names are trademarks of their respective owners. ZNetLab is an independent product and is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Product and model names are used only to describe compatibility.

See also the Terms of Use and the Privacy Notice.