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Help understanding lab setup...

verbhertzverbhertz Member Posts: 54 ■■□□□□□□□□
in CCNA & CCENT
I've been a lurker here every day the past few months, and I'm into chapter 8 on Lammle's book currently. I have Odom's set on the shelf to read next. I plan on reading the CCENT portions of each and then going the two test route. Anyways, on to my question...

I have GNS 3, but I am willing to spend a few bucks to invest in my future (plus I'm a geek). I am thinking about buying two 2950s and a 3550 from eBay. I want to connect the physical switches to the virtual routers in GNS3. What else will I need to do this? Ethernet cables are already covered... I'm just sitting here on a 4-year old Dell that is my main PC for everthing, as well as an old Dell Optiplex 745 running Ubuntu. Neither machine is really beefy. Am I going to need some quad port NICs and a lot of virtual machines up at the same time to really benefit from all this? The thought of physical equipment with virtual stuff is enticing. If I can get away with spending < $250 (I plan on getting the switches for well under that), than I will be very pleased!

Thanks in advance. icon_study.gif
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    gc8dc95gc8dc95 Member Posts: 206 ■■□□□□□□□□
    It really depends on your end goal and how sophisticated you want to make it. Personally, I would grab a few NICs for connections to switches and I have spun up some VM's to lab different situations.
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    verbhertzverbhertz Member Posts: 54 ■■□□□□□□□□
    I want to expand it and use it for learning beyond the CCNA. I've considered getting some cheapo USB NICs and throwing them onto a USB hub.
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    Jon_CiscoJon_Cisco Member Posts: 1,772 ■■■■■■■■□□
    You probably will not need to run any virtual machines. As long as your idle PC is set ok in GNS3 you can probably use older equipment. CCNA study is not processor intensive. I don't know about higher level certs yet.

    I did not connect GNS3 to my lab yet so I can't really offer you any tips there.

    Good Luck
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    BerkshireHerdBerkshireHerd Member Posts: 185
    Just get a hold of Packet tracer for CCENT if you can. Or if you really want to use GNS3 then just use routers that act like PC's. All you need to do is to shut off routing on the routers and they basically act like a pc, give them and IP and a default gateway
    Identity & Access Manager // B.A - Marshall University 2005
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