Assembling Your Cisco Home Lab CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial

Assembling Your Cisco Home Lab CCNA / CCNP Home Lab Tutorial
A CCNA or CCNP candidate who wants to be prepared for their exams is going to put together a home lab to practice on. With used Cisco routers & switches more affordable & plentiful then ever before, there is really no excuse to not have six!

With the lots of different models available, there is some understandable confusion among future CCNAs & CCNPs about which routers to buy & which ones to avoid. You can take any set of Cisco routers & put together a home lab; part of the learning process is taking what equipment you have obtainable & putting together your own lab! For those of you preparing to start your home lab or add to your existing one, this article will list the routers I use in my Cisco pods. You certainly don't have to have all this equipment, but this will give you some lovely ideas on how to get started.

The most versatile router you can get for your CCNA / CCNP home lab is a 2520. These routers come with four serial ports, one ethernet port, & one BRI interface for ISDN practice. This mix of interfaces means you can actually use it as a frame relay switch while using the ethernet & BRI ports for routing. (There is no problem with using a lab router as both your frame relay switch & a practice router; for a frame relay switch sample configuration, visit my web-site!)

My pods consist of one routers & four switches, & four of the one routers are 2520s, due to their versatility. A recent ebay search showed these routers selling for $99 - $125, an outstanding value for the practice you are going to get.

A combination that works well is using four 2520s; one as my dedicated frame relay switch, one as R1, & another as R2. Add a 2501 as R3, & you can have a frame cloud connecting R1, R2, & R3, a direct serial connection between R1 & R3, an Ethernet segment that includes all four routers, & an ISDN connection between R1 & R2 if you have an ISDN simulator. That combination will permit you to get a tremendous amount of practice for the exams, & you can always sell it when you are done!

I also use 2501s in my home labs. These have fewer interfaces, but the combination of four serial interfaces & one ethernet interface allows you to get plenty of practice.

With four routers to work with, you are probably going to get tired of moving that console cable around. An access server (actually a Cisco router, not the white boxes they tend to think of when they hear "server") will help you out with that. An access server allows you to set up a connection with each of your other routers via an octal cable, which prevents you from moving that console cable around continually. For an example of an access server configuration, visit my web-site & look in the "Free Training" section.

2501s are affordable, with lots of in the $50 range on ebay. it is possible to get four 2520s & one 2501 for less than $500 total, & you can get most of that money back if you choose to sell it when you are done.

one query I get often from CCNA / CCNP candidates is "What routers should I buy that I can still use when I'm ready to study for the CCNP?" The CCIE lab changes regularly & sometimes drastically when it comes to the equipment you'll require. During my CCIE lab studies, I found that renting time from online rack rental providers was actually the best way to be going. Don't hesitate when putting your CCNA / CCNP home lab together, wondering what will be acceptable for the CCIE lab a year or so from now. None of us know what is going to be on that equipment list, so get the CCNA & CCNP first - by building your own Cisco home lab!

Access server prices vary a bit; don't panic if you do an ebay search & see them costing thousands of dollars. You do NOT require an expensive access server for your CCNA / CCNP home lab. 2511s are great routers to get for your access server.