Cisco Packet Tracer - advice

Banzai_Joe · 2 Sep 2020 at 10:20

Hey all, one for the relative networks experts here.

I want to play with and test our current network. I've part studied CCNA, so i'm registered with CNA and have (legit) Packet Trace v7 installed.
All my network knowledge is experience based, not really text book. I did CCNA until i'd learned what i needed to know to do my job (at the time).
But now, all our network is based on HP/Aruba L3 switches, so is it worth getting into Cisco's Packet Tracer if they only present Cisco products for you to play/test with?
I've heard GNS3 isn't as good when starting off.

Advice appreciated, thanks.

Caged · 2 Sep 2020 at 11:00

Depends what you want to learn. If you're wanting to get a good grasp of concepts then learning on Cisco products isn't an issue at all, if you want to learn Aruba specifically then it's not such a good option.

I will say that I have no issues moving between Cisco and Aruba products, IOS and ProVision are very similar, and the tab and ? buttons are your friends. I'd expect more divergence when you're comparing it to AOS-CX.

Banzai_Joe · 2 Sep 2020 at 11:10

Thanks for the reply Caged. For me, our Aruba switches for setup by someone who no longer works for us. So i've had to figure out how the VLANs were set up as a lot of the ports have been tampered with so tagging and untagging needed to be re-done. And because the network here is so utterly FUBAR'd i thought it might be an idea to try and re-design it in packet tracer (whilst learning 'safely' along the way).
I'm not familiar with the CLI, that's where i might have to go back to my CCNA books.

Banzai_Joe · 2 Sep 2020 at 11:14

I don't suppose you could import other brand 'models' into PT?