Cisco Home Lab or Rent Rack Time

Enter Username

Has anyone any experience with renting rack time for practicing labs as part of the CCNA course.

Instead of spend €500+ on a home lab I was thinking of renting Racktime from these guys

http://ccie4u.com/rack1.shtml

€8 for a 4 hour times slot sounds pretty reasonable

Gonzovision

Don't think there's any need to spend all that on a lab for CCNA. Plenty of good pre-built labs on Ebay for ~ 150.

Also you'd do fine using GNS3 or the Cisco packet tracer is pretty good too.

Captain Commie

Cisco Packet Tracer or GNS3 is far better.

I got a cheap home lab online a couple of years ago which was real good for leaning on, but the above apps will give you the same ammount of useability if not more. I would routinely create large/complex networks on packet tracer which involve hundreds of endpoints, something that would take a whole office block to do in real life.

Also. as far as that rent rack site, its overkill for what you need for the CCNA, as says on the site its geared to CCIE.

Best thing you can do is get a copy of Cisco Packet Tracer and a book on the subject and start working on it, i know FAS used to do an online course for bout €100 that teaches u more or less all you know.

Best of luck getting the CCNA, im going to start working on it again as soon as i finish my Bsc in IT Management

accensi0n

GNS3 and a couple of physical switches (2950's) and you'll be grand. You'll also be able to sell the switches on afterwards if you don't want them.

Good luck.

coolpix23

Rental seems cheap but 4 hrs goes so quickly. I'd always go for my own equiptment. You actualy get to play around with the cables and cards yourself. And it's yours to sell when your'e finished. At an interview you can say youv'e had hands-on.

I have a lab on here with 2x2620xm's and a 2950-24 and the cards/cables. It's €360. It's pricey because it's top gear. If your'e not sure your'e going to continue with Cisco exams maybe too much.

However if you went for a 1721 or 1750 router they take the normal WIC's, the 1750 takes a VOIP card so they would still be useful later. They look like a plastic cable TV decoder but theyr'e cheap. They have an external PSU so make sure you get that. If theyr'e pricing it because theyr'e including network cards make sure it's a WIC 1t or WIC 2t. For a cheap switch check the 2924. Realy though when you add post from the UK your'e much better off just going for a 2950, €10-20 extra.

GNS3 is great. A gottca when using it with vista/7...The "User Account Control".
A program called dynamips, a dos bassed program runs underneath GNS3. When you start GNS3 it starts dynamips then windows waits for you to confirm it can continue but you don't see anything on the screen. You need to go start->control pannel (classic view) -> Turn User Accont Control On Or Off. Turn it Off.

GNS3 is an emulator not a simmulator so you still need a Cisco IOS.

Check out subnet192.com, it's hard to find actual labs, these seem ok. He goes a bit over board with how much Cisco gear you actualy need. But he gives objectives and then goes through how to do it. He has a laptop in the diagrams but the cable that you use has a serial connector so for a laptop you need a serial-usb adaptor. It goes into a standard PC serial port.

Also check http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/24916, bit old but theyr'e written by the guy who writes the Cisco Press ICND/CCNA books.

If you're buying a single switch go for a 2950. They come in 12 and 24 port versions. I don't know if there's a huge price difference but if you can get a 12 port cheap why pay lot's more a 24 port for a lab? You can get a 2950-24
on ebay from the UK for €80 - €85 including post.

I have one for €80. I'm in Baltinglass, 30 miles from Tallagh / 15 from Carlow Town. Post would be €18.25 for registered parcel post.

Very important!!!!!
If it's your first piece of Cisco gear make absloutly sure to get a console cable. It's a strange type of serial cable. It has a standard serial connector on one end for a PC serial port BUT on the other end it has an RJ45 (LAN type) connector. Cisco originals are light blue.

Patrick

Enter Username

Many thanks for all the replies guys, I think it will be down the home lab route instead of renting rack time.

I already have one switch - Cat 3750 - and also a router, not sure what model but it only has a ISDN interface card in it so I will need to buy a WIC 1T.

I think I will try to add

2 x 2520 routers
1 x Frame Relay Switch and another switch.

Freeman

Many thanks for all the replies guys, I think it will be down the home lab route instead of renting rack time.

I already have one switch - Cat 3750 - and also a router, not sure what model but it only has a ISDN interface card in it so I will need to buy a WIC 1T.

I think I will try to add

2 x 2520 routers
1 x Frame Relay Switch and another switch.

You are right to buy some real equipment. I did that last year and learned so much. I have tried Packet Tracer and GNS 3 and yes they're good if you already have experience with real equipment but they can't fully replicate how a real cisco device will behave. I have noticed that most posters on boards seem to advocate not buying equipment but I think that is a mistake if you're just starting out and are serious about your cisco career.

Cisco 3640 Routers are good value but noisy. I have 3x3640, 1x1721 and 2x2950 Switches, about 4xWic cards and various cables (rollover, serial dce/dte, straight-through, crossover). Teraterm is a nice program for Telnet/SSH

I did find something which may be of interest to you though, it's a website called Packetlife where you can use the equipment for free remotely once you schedule your time.

I think you will use the equipment a lot more for the CCNA than the CCENT if your going that path.

jas2002

Suggest buying your own eqpt (2/3of 17xx/18xx and 2/3of 29xx sws) for hands on and real cable connections (check DB60's are not upside down when inserted) along with teraterm pro (free) for console access. This will allow you to build a triangular network and check to see how the network behaves when broken and restored.

As innovated pointed out, if larger networks are needed, then Packet Tracer will fill this gap.

coolpix23

The 2520 is great for the four serial connections.

The cable uses the DB60 connector so if you're using other routers like the 26xx's that use WIC's get WIC 1T's to keep the number of types of cables down. If you start using WIC 2T's you'll need some DB60-DCE to smart serial-DTE and DB60-DTE to smart serial-DCE.

You will need WIC 2T's later but keep it simple at the start.

With the 25xx's make sure to get the AUI tranceiver. I have some on order from Hong Kong but I'm starting to think they won't turn up. I have some on the way from the US but that costs a lot.

You can use 2500’s without external transceivers to save money. When configuring, issue the no keepalive command under the Ethernet interface, and the router Ethernet interface will be able to come up. You cannot connect other devices to the interface, but the router will treat the interface as up/up, advertising about any connected subnets and responding to pings of the IP address on that interface.