hows this for a cisco lab?

atomiser · 2 Apr 2009 at 23:01

hi there,

ok, so i passed my ccna last friday. i went the networking academy route so i had access to some proper kit. since the course finished i've had to make do with packet tracer. it's 'ok' but it's nowhere near as good as getting my hands dirty. i want to get a small lab of kit to keep on top of my skills, and also to pick up additional ones - i'm going after ccna: security next. i've found a pre-built lab, consisting of: 3x 2610xm routers, and 2x 12-port 2950 switches.

the routers have 64mb ram, 16mb flash, are running 12.4 ios and sdm, and come with quad-serial interfaces. the switches are running the 'latest' ios. it also comes with soho 97 adsl ethernet router. this has 32mb ram, 8mb flash, and is running 12.4 ios. (not sure i would actually use this though, since i have a juniper 5gt-adsl at home already).

as you would expect it is supplied with 3x dce/dte cables and a couple of console cables, along with cat5e and power cables. this is available for £465 and £15 shipping.

this seems fairly reasonable to me, but i would like to get some advice from some people more in the know as to whether this is 'ok'. please feel free to suggest any alternatives.

many thanks!

edit: i should also add that i have a 2621xm router lying around but i dont think it has much memory or flash, and im fairly sure it is running a much older version of ios. could probably use it for something though, not much use on its own though!

i also have a pix515e that i can add into the mix too.

brainchylde · 2 Apr 2009 at 23:43

Have you considered gns3 - it's like vmware for cisco kit. You can even link it in to a physical network.

ThomP · 3 Apr 2009 at 09:17

Hi,

That's not bad, I paid a around £400 for 2x 2950 24 port with the same routers about 1yr ago.

atomiser · 3 Apr 2009 at 09:42

brainchylde said:
Have you considered gns3 - it's like vmware for cisco kit. You can even link it in to a physical network.

yeah i have considered it, and i have tried it...but i think at this early stage in my cisco life i need some proper hands on with the kit...i think gns3 will come into play a bit later on (once i have some proper experience) to emulate kit that i cannot afford to buy...

Skidilliplop · 3 Apr 2009 at 15:42

Depeds how much you want to spend.
My lab has evolved over the years but currently consists of 3x 1721 routers, two 2516 routers (NVRAM no longer holds config after reboot due to age) and two 2900XL switches in a 12U cab. Doesn't hugely matter what hardware you use provided the IOS is 12. something and have fastethernet interfaces (10base ethernet interface modesl can't support dot1q). 1700s are dirt cheap ~£30 each. i'll probably later replace my ailing 2500s with 2600XMs but they're still £80+ £150ish if you want the ones with dual Ethernet.

That lab looks ok. Pre builts are good because they usually come with cables etc. It's quite a faff if you buy odd routers here and there then have to find cables to connect up the miriad of WICs.

I don't like the new 4.0 syllabus anyway. Semester 1 seems backward and i don't like the labs having two LANs for each router as that makes the hardware expensive. Though if you have some networking accument you can emulate this using secondary IP address on a single interface. I use VLANs but only because i've done the course before on the 3.1 syllabus.