Help with my Cisco Labs

Ricochet J

Ricochet J

Ricochet J

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Joined
29 Jun 2004
Posts
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In September i'm going to buy my own labs for my CCNA. Nothing over the top, but something to work with. At first, i'll have about £40 - £50 which will hopefully get me my first router and switch. Then onwards, in Sept - Oct i'll be getting more money to buy different parts. And hopefully, a 6u cabinet too.

Right now, i've been looking at Cisco 2500 and 1600 routers. The 1600 are dirt cheap and can probably buy two of these, if not three. The 2500s I believe are far more powerful however, cost £30 - £40.

Im undecided on the Catalyst Switches as I don't know which to go for.

I'm also faced with another problem. Labs like these:

ciscoro1.jpg


Now, I only have one computer at home. How will I tackle the problem of getting the other two? I can't afford two other computers or laptops. One thing I thought was buying three serial to USB adapters for the console cables. Also, having three NICs. I've got two NICs onboard on my motherboard, I can buy another (they're dirt cheap nowadays). Will this idea work?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks :)
 
Which course are you doing? CCNA or CCNP, i very much doubt youll be doing your CCIE.

If your on your CCNA all you need if 2 -3 2500/2600 routers with serial and ethernet connectivtiy plus a switch that is Vlan capable like the 1900 series.

You can pickup pre-bundled hardware labs from auction sites, specially the main one, if you do a search for "Cisco lab" theres an experienced chap who will help you put one together for your price.
 
Nope. Sorry mate. Thanks for the reply but i'm not interested in sims. I can't learn by readin. I learn by doing. By setting up pieces of equipment, checking status lights etc. Although, admitidlly, most of it is reading from a hyperterminal session.
I need something physical.

If anyone else wants to reply feel free to :)
 
Just thinking about this, I suppose you could do what's shown in the diagram with three routers, one switch and one pc - you'ld have to throw another nic in the pc, and then whack each nic on a different VLAN on the switch. plug the right interface from each router into the correct VLAN on the switch as well, and you've got three networks right there.

Your main problem will be telling windows not to route between the three nics - what might work is 3 virtual machines running vmware and bound to each of the three nics. Then you'll effectively have three computers on three different networks which can't see each other. That all relies on being able to bind a vm to a specific nic....

*Edit* also, that means your routers will be connected over ethernet and not serial, don't know if that's a huge problem, can get 1600s with ethernet wics.
 
I'm unsure about VLANs. Hopefully i'll learn that later in the CCNA! I'm not up to VLANs yet.

What's this virtual machines then?

Edit: Been reading VMWares website, and i've been looking at the VMPlayer, free edition. I read that, if i've interpreted carefully, that I can asssign different NICs to different Virtual Machines which'll help me in my labs. However, does this free version allow me to mimmick three different workstations at the same time?
 
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Yes, get VMServer (i've never used vm player) - you can then run as many vms at the same time as you like. The only assumption that I was making was about binding a vm to a nic - if that's possible, you're sorted.

VLANs are a way of virtually separating networks from each other whilst allowing them to be run through the same hardware. If you've got 4 networks, then tradition dictates you need 4 switches. However, you can achieve the same thing with one switch which is VLAN-aware.
 
I'll look into that when my CCNA allows me to.

Thanks for your advice.

Now all I need to do is look into the equipment. I'm only a student with limited funds, so, would a 1600 series router suffice for my CCNA?
 
Just another thought on VMWare server, I've just checked the config and it most definitely can be done so that one machine is bound to one particular nic. Let me know when you need to know how to do it :)
 
Nope. Haven't a clue how to do it.
I just downloaded it though. It looks okay.
When I installed it, it was complaing it's not on a server OS (Windows XP). However, it seems to work fine :)

I quickly created a Virtual PC, And named it Windows XP nVidia (for the nVidia Ethernet adapter). However, when I started the virtual machine it says no OS was detected :eek: Do I need to install Windows XP on each Virtual Machine? :eek:

And how did you add the individual ethernet ports?

Thanks for the help mate.

Edit: E-Mail in trust if it saves you time mate. I'll check back tomarrow morning :)
 
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A Virtual machine is just that. A complete virtual machine. It's got it's own virtual hard disk, it's own virtual processor, memory, cd drive, nic etc. Now, when you set up the vm, it asks you about what you want to do with these - usually defines a space for a hard disk, tell it how much memory you want to allocate to it, and what netorking mode you want the virtual nic in (bridged, nat, isolated I think). Once done, you've got a blank computer - you need to install an OS on it - to do this, just mount a windows xp iso (if you don't have one, make it from your windows xp cd) and turn the vm on. It'll go through the VMware bios and boot from the cd (the hard disk is blank). From a legality standpoint, I think the windows xp pro license allows you 5 virtual instances of the os. If not, just use a linux distro if all you're going to be doing is telnetting/testing connectivity.

Once you've done that for the 3 virtual computers you need (installing VMWare tools on each OS is a good idea as well), you need to 'assign' each vm to a nic. First, edit the settings of each vm to set the ethernet connection to "custom". Set the first vm to VMnet1, the second to VMnet2 etc. Then, go "Host"->"Virtual Network Settings"->"Host Virtual Network Mapping". Here you should see a list of each VMnet adaptor, and a dropdown box next to each one. Assign each physical nic on the host to each VMnet.

Hopefully, that should bridge each vm to each nic, and then you've got three machines on three different networks.

I have no idea if this will work, but it all seems sensible. :)
 
bear in mind that you will need a reasonable amount of ram to be able to run the host machine and 3 guest virtual machines simultaneously...
 
Cheers for the help. I've got 1Gb RAM, and will allocate 256Mb RAM to each VM, thus leaving me 256MB left in real time Windows.

I have a feeling this is going to be hard :eek:

Edit: How do I mount a Windows XP ISO? :p (I have the Windows XP CD)
 
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You can get the vm to use your real cd drive as it's cd drive, or you could use one of the millions of programs out there to rip an iso of the cd and mount that. Either way is good :)
 
eXSBass said:
Thanks for the advice guys. I'll be playing with VMWare a lot in the evening/tomarrow afternoon.

:)
Click to expand...


VMWARE is awsome its what I used on my cisco routers to check packets n stuff through 2 2610s.

I got 4 vmware workstations connected to my router on a 10 network :p
 
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