Creating a Cisco/testing lab, suggestions requested!

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djBon2112

Supreme [H]ardness
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Hey everyone. I'm in the 4th semester of my Network Engineering and Security Analyst program, so we're starting Cisco 1, and I want to start putting together a lab of some sort. I've already got my home network up the way I want it (all gigabit, set up properly already), so this will just be for learning purposes. I don't want to spend more than $300 now, but I'd like enough to test various setups and such. What routers/switches/etc. should I be looking at getting to make a basic setup? And where do you guys get yours on the cheap (don't say Ebay, they've got nothing today)?
 
google Wendell Odom

he's a CCIE and has a blog on networkingworld and he's also an instructor for Cisco classes, anyway, more to the point, he did some blog posts where he priced home based labs for learning CCNA and CCNP material and priced them according to specific budgets

you might wanna look over those posts, they are in his archives

anyway his blog is great and worth reading

next month i'm building a CCNP lab, probably gonna spend $700-750

you CAN use DynamIPs instead, theres a sticky here in the network forum about it
 
Read the sticky, use Dynamips.

Edit: Don't say ebay....? Why not? That IS where you get cheap lab gear.
 
honestly if you only have 300 to spend on a lab your not gonna get much of anywhere, all your gonna be able to get on ebay is dated tech which will only teach you the basic basics. i hit up ebay when i started up my own lab and though some deals were so great... then learned they were no help and now i gotta resell them to get equipment to do what i want.
 
moose517 said:
honestly if you only have 300 to spend on a lab your not gonna get much of anywhere, all your gonna be able to get on ebay is dated tech which will only teach you the basic basics. i hit up ebay when i started up my own lab and though some deals were so great... then learned they were no help and now i gotta resell them to get equipment to do what i want.
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that's a prime example of why you do research before you buy
 
djBon2112 said:
Horrible shipping costs to me... often over $70 :( Kinda destroys most deals when on such a tight budget.
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There's enough used Cisco gear appearing on eBay from Canadian sellers that while it might be a bit more difficult to find what you want, and you might pay a bit more, it's certainly doable. I buy networking gear on eBay all the time. Buying from US sellers is possible as well if they ship USPS to Canada and offer reasonable shipping rates; I would avoid anyone that uses FedEx or UPS.
 
^Word.

My $50 door stop Cisco 2600 router runs 12.4T Advanced Enterprise Services code which has more features than you could shake a stick at. But if you have a spare PC with a couple of nics, you can run dynamips and run all the same features with less hassle.

The thing you can't emulate very well is switching, going to need some real gear for that :D

Anyways OP, if you're just starting out on Cisco tech, I would just use PacketTracer. It's enough to get anybody through basic CCNA-level configuration/troubleshooting tasks.
 
I'd rather stick entirely with actual hardware than virtual stuff... it just seems easier to me :p

I'm checking Ebay again for some Canadian sellers, maybe I'll get lucky ;)
 
in my CCNA class, we use Packet Tracer

it works just fine, I have another forum member over here, learning some basic CCNA stuff from me (he's only interested in dabbling for now) with Packet Tracer

i have all the CCNA 2, 3, and 4 PT labs if you need em
 
I use packet tracer to. (in school) and i didn't follow the direction line for line. Configured the router out of order for static routes and it wouldn't grade it. Other than that it worked great for everything I've done.
 
I checked out Wendell Odom's blog, and found (I think) the post the second poster mentioned, but it's all going over my head right now (as I said, I've only done a single class of Cisco 1 so far :p)... So, I was wondering, for those of you with labs, excatly what models of routers/switches do you have? Just so I have a broad idea what to look for. (I'm also checking at school to see what we use here so I can at least be consistent)

Edit: At school we're using 2651XM's: what else compares, since they're all $200+ on eBay?
 
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djBon2112 said:
I checked out Wendell Odom's blog, and found (I think) the post the second poster mentioned, but it's all going over my head right now (as I said, I've only done a single class of Cisco 1 so far :p)... So, I was wondering, for those of you with labs, excatly what models of routers/switches do you have? Just so I have a broad idea what to look for. (I'm also checking at school to see what we use here so I can at least be consistent)

Edit: At school we're using 2651XM's: what else compares, since they're all $200+ on eBay?
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why don't you just pass CCNA 1 before worrying about routers and switches

why not learn in Packet Tracer first?

I'm NOT saying there's anything wrong with what you're doing

but you should seriously think about learning in Packet Tracer first before you start investing real money into equipment, because PT is basically command for command what you'll be doing on routers in switches in the CCNA course

after CCNA, PT isnt really good

but for CCNA its perfect

i have ALL 4 semester's worth of Packet Tracer labs

i can hook you up, just PM me your email

i'm already instructing one member on H with some CCNA labs I gave him
 
ugh.... here we go again.

1. I wrote that stickey to help people out that wanted to learn cisco routing/ minor switching. Have you read it djbon? Honestly, if you cant get dynamips to work you're going to have a very tough time working with Cisco.

2. Virtual is harder than physical routers at first. Ask anyone of us that has made the transition from real equipment to dynamips. I personally like all of my routers to all boot up in under a minute.

3. On a 300 dollar budget you're not going to get much. What I would do is grab a few lower end switches(2924/50) and some 4 port NICs. Pop them in your hopefully dual core atleast computer with atleast 2 gigs of ram and you should be good to go for a decent lab.

4. Read my stickey again!:p

5. Packet tracer will get you started, but overall its extremely limited. If you want to run REAL IOS you need to either have a real router or dynamips.

Also, you want to run 12.4? better make sure that your real hardware has enough flash and dram. Want to run 15.0? You're not going to be able to with your budget.. but with Dynamips you can. See my point here :D Dynamips is so damn sweet that I built out the routing portion of one of a forum members network and configured all of it and explained it in under 10 minutes. Calvin, pipe up!
 
xphil3 said:
See my point here :D Dynamips is so damn sweet that I built out the routing portion of one of a forum members network and configured all of it and explained it in under 10 minutes. Calvin, pipe up!
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Ok I'm Piping up. xphil here did a demo for me of frame relay and ospf for something we were doing at work. He did the entire thing in Dynamips and showed me how it all works. From the Frame Relay Switching, DLCI's, OSPF and everything. And he's right. Explained it all in under 10 minutes. And his setup time was next to nothing. I sent him the Visio of what I wanted to accomplish. 10 minutes later we were looking a the console of the routers and it all worked like I thought it would. Sure you see the pics of all of the stuff he has, but he will be the first to tell you that Dynamips is the way to go hands down.

Here is where I'm sold. xphil has it running in esxi, linux & 1 gig of ram. Yes I said it. 1 gb of ram for his dynamips box. How can you not be sold on that. I also showed this to a fellow co worker of mine using the windows installable files for dynamips. So your not well versed in Linux. Run dynamips on windows. Ran pretty well on my work laptop (T500, 4gb of ram, 320 HD).

Also I tell you that for 300 bucks you can't get that lab on that kind of budget. Trust me I've tried and I'll be the first to tell you that I failed at it too. Your average router these days that will run at least 12.4 IOS is going to cost you around that.

If you haven't read the dynamips sticky yet do it. Real equipment is great. Nice to have the flashy lights and sound of the fans, but if your budget is only 300 bucks to spend on a cisco lab odds are your budget for your electric bill isn't that great either.
 
I guess Ghost IOS and all that (sparse mem?) makes it possible. I've never really checked out my RAM usage, Ubuntu caches most of it anyway.
 
Vito_Corleone said:
I guess Ghost IOS and all that makes it possible. I've never really checked out my RAM usage, Ubuntu caches most of it anyway.
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Ghost IOS is a must. The virtual router ram, by default will be on the hard disk anyways so large amount of physical memory isn't needed. You can obviously change this(if you have lots of ram, you will without a doubt benefit). The only thing that dynamips is using physical memory for is the process itself, so the hypervisor.
 
I was interested in Dynamips at one point but I couldn't find IOS files, i guess I must have not been looking hard

or into the shadows enough
 
Fail said:
I was interested in Dynamips at one point but I couldn't find IOS files, i guess I must have not been looking hard

or into the shadows enough
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Can you obtain them just from cisco website without purchasing physical equipment? :confused:
 
I don't think so, but you CAN get them from physical equipment by copying the files, I know that much

We do have the physical equipment here at school, but the stuff we have in school is the same stuff we use in packet tracer, model and everything

so i'm not sure what good that'll do

at least i think it's all the same models, i'll have to check that next week when I return to class
 
Packet Tracer isn't real, it's not IOS, it's just a program. All the things you use are programmed into it (badly) and you can't do anything past what has been written into it.

Using Dynamips is the same as using real gear, you are running a real IOS image. So if you were able to get your hands on some IOS images, you'd be able to do far more with Dynamips (or real gear) than what you can do with PT.
 
I was just replying to your comment "so i'm not sure what good that'll do". Just saying that it could do a lot of good.
 
but why if they're the same models as the ones in PT

why would i need Dynamips?

for CCNA, PT is fine so far

for CCNP probably not

i''ll have to look more into Dynamips

they don't have a bunch of different models at college

AFAIK they look like 2950's, i'd have to look at the model numbers

My problem with dynamips was i did have a few IOS files but couldn't get em to work for some reasons
 
Fail said:
but why if they're the same models as the ones in PT

why would i need Dynamips?

for CCNA, PT is fine so far
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Dynamips is more robust and more functionally "accurate". PT will get your through the CCNA simulations, and perhaps some very basic configurations. The models in PT are softeware coded, to give you a router feel. Like Vito said, its nothing more than FAKE software simulating a router. Dynamips is an emulator.

Fail said:
for CCNP Definitely not
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Fixed :p

Fail said:
i''ll have to look more into Dynamips

My problem with dynamips was i did have a few IOS files but couldn't get em to work for some reasons
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You need to read my thread again then too! :D
 
Tonight when i return to my hideout, I'll give it another try

that's not for another few hours though

Doubt i'll make any progress without any IOS files

i just need to know how to launch the IOS files within and from there how to make seperate devices and so on and so forth

CONFIGURING comes easy for me, i understand how to configure routers and switches

it's the other side of the equation when it comes to IOS files and setting up multiple devices and so on and so forth i stumble on

I use Windows 7
 
Thanks guys. I did read your sticky Xphil3, but I wanted to go physical due to my wanting to replicate my lab environment, but I talked to the prof yesterday, and he said we're using PT anyways, so I'll just go with that for now.
 
well if you still want all the labs from the other semesters, i can provide them if you PM me your email

they are small files, like 5 MB a semester

packet tracer files are very small

i know you're in CCNA 1, but you could start learning Routing (semester 2) and Switching (semester 3) right away

i also can hook you up to something else, i'm gonna PM you
 
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