CCNA Lab

evanderburg

My school is finally willing to allocate some money to buy us some equipment. I do not know how much money but I am sure it will not be much given past experiences. Anyway, I wanted to know what equipment we need for our CCNA lab. The last time I taught it we had to use a router sim and I hope to get rid of the router sim this time.

If I could have a basic version and then a more expensive version, that would be great. I will then try to hunt things down on ebay and get them a price list.

evanderburg

Any suggestions?

mikeyoung

Here is a link to a page on this site that contains the basic set up you will need and you can buy all of this on e-bay or other places at very reasonable prices.

http://www.techexams.net/technotes/ccna/lab_hardware.shtml

But, and I am being blunt, I can't imagine how you can TEACH a CCNA class/lab if you need to ask this question.

Mike

TheShadow

This guy is expensive but he is reliable and tests all of his equipment.

You said school so I would consider one of each of the following for about $6K total. This will give you 5 pods, one reasonably current pod and 4 "they will do" pods.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Cisco-CCNP-Lab-Kit-2x2620-2x2500-2x2950-ISDN-Sim_W0QQitemZ5851938442QQcategoryZ67321QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Cisco-CCNA-Classroom-Lab-Kit-13x2500-4x1912-EXTRAS_W0QQitemZ5851860651QQcategoryZ67317QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

evanderburg

I will be getting $200. I want to get 3 routers and two switches. I need 3 routers to do frame relay and the switches for trunking. I do not know if I will be able to do it with that kind of a budget.

TheShadow

Sorry but unless you get awful lucky on ebay that ain't happening. There have been quite a few buy low sell high vultures on ebay for the last several months. They have been buying up far more equipment than what you need to make dozens of labs. So the prices of things like switches have been inflated. Used 2950's for example have been selling for almost new price. Dual router and dual 1900 switches are about $300 currently. Maybe you could do better looking for token ring only routers.

mikej412

evanderburg wrote:

I will be getting $200.

I wouldn't get rid of the router sims just yet.

What's the old saying? Good, fast, cheap -- pick 2?

Routing, wans, switching -- pick 2.

Not sure you have the budget to even come close to covering the switching stuff - trunking, stp, and vtp -- a router with a FastEthernet and maybe 3 2950's.

But you probably do have the budget to cover routing and wans (and and the cables and a cheap switch). 2 out of 3 ain't bad (for a start). And some real hands on work is better than nothing.

Use the sim for switching and ISDN now if you can.

evanderburg

They are not exactly giving me a choice. They told me to get the equipment to make the program run with $200. All they care about is student evaluations and the budget. We have different priorities. I'll probably end up spending some of my own money to get a few things and then bring them in as mine. At least my evaluations are high. I might still be able to keep the sim in the budget since it was in there last time we taught the course. I guess I will deal with that when the time comes. It is servers this quarter, security next quarter, and then Cisco again.

It is almost like one of those exam questions where you implement a solution using equipment that would cost a fortune and then you get into the real world and discover that you have none of that but you still have to make it work.

bbel121

The most common setup would be two 2500 routers and a switch. It would be best to get a 2912 or 2950-12 switch but those switches would eat up your budget all by themselves. I think the best you are going to do is a two router setup for about $200. Here is something on ebay that is not a bad deal

Check out ebay item #5851738037 or 5851236829

The second item is kind of high in price, but that gives you some ideas of different ways to approach it.

John