Cisco Hardware learning advice

[ryu]

Hi all

Just after a little advice for learning Cisco switches and routing.

I am a Network Admin/Sys Admin in my day job but only have experience with what my company uses which is Netgear switches/Draytek Routers/Watchguard Firewall etc.

If I was to buy the following lab pack for £90 off of the well known auction site would these be adequate for following along with the labs?

Cisco Devices
2 x Cisco 2621XM (Router With Two Fast Ethernet Ports)
3 x Cisco WS-C2950-24 (SWITCH)

Any features these would lack or anything I need to be aware of?

Thanks in advance

 

[ryu]

Hi thanks for the feedback.

I agree that it's nice to have the chance to play around with actual hardware, familiarise and become comfortable with it, doing firmware upgrades etc.

I have had a play around with packet tracer and have been following some of the easier tutorials and its a great little program to simulate the experience and learn from in a clutter free environment. There seemed to be limitations in the inability to be able to do extended vlans, so I assume there may be numerous other things along the way, can these be done using GNS3? I have not taken a look at that yet.

I am merely intrigued at the moment and have no need to learn this at my current job but who knows what the future holds.