CCNA Lab

Misan

Misan

Misan

Associate
Joined
17 Nov 2006
Posts
123
Location
Manchester
Hi guys, I am currently about to setup a Cisco lab for my CCNA/CCINE which consists of 4 x 2600 routers and 2 x 2950 switches.

What I'd like to be able to do is keep the lab separate from my home network, and perhaps have a laptop I can use to wirelessly access the Cisco equipment.

My current setup consists of a cable modem attached to a ALIX board running pfsense, with the LAN interface connected to a 24-port gigabit switch (unmanaged) I then have a 24-port patch panel which runs the Cat5e to each room in the house.

I've checked the pfsense forums, and they said this would be possible if I was to setup a VLAN on the LAN interface of the pfsense box. Any suggestions on the best way to go about doing this would be super.

Thanks for any help.
 
Misan said:
What I'd like to be able to do is keep the lab separate from my home network, and perhaps have a laptop I can use to wirelessly access the Cisco equipment.
Click to expand...

First off, for a lab you will most likely be unplugging cables and switching stuff around all the time as you change from one scenario to the next, so you may as well just use a wired connection to connect to them, if you realy want wireless then just attach a cheap wireless router and work through that, but you will still need console cables for the initial configuration.

As for keeping it separate from your home network, how about simply not connecting it to your home network?
 
^second that, id just keep it seperate to keep it simple as your throwing another link to fail while your setting up and testing.
 
Cheers for the replies guys. One of the main reasons I wasn't overly keen on using a hard wired connection is that the Cisco kit is installed in a comms cabinet in my cellar.. which would mean doing another cable run to my room (top floor of the house)

I'll do the initial config on the switches and routers first via the console cable and then see what I can come up with for ease of access later down the line.
 
Misan said:
the Cisco kit is installed in a comms cabinet in my cellar.. which would mean doing another cable run to my room (top floor of the house)
Click to expand...

Do you not have a spare cable from cellar > patch panel and then patch panel > your room? If so then just patch them through.
 
A slighty more crude solution might be to plug it all in as normal and just isolate by assigning a different network to the lab kit and put your laptop on both ranges?

Or put a wireless ap on the lab vlan.
 
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