Frame Switch / NBMA network necessary or even beneficial in home lab?

ande0255

I am about to dive head first into ROUTE, and wanted the advice of those who have been through it. I have frame switch sitting logically in the middle of routers simulating an NBMA network, as can be viewed on the attachment.

I have not barely began to crack into the depths of routing protocols, just getting the lab fine tuned, and I am wondering if a frame switch is going to throw a wrench into my studies with the oddities that comes with frame relay or if forming a triangle of routers minus the frame switch would be a better option.

I'm not against keeping it in the mix even if it's not on the ROUTE, but I just never see frame-relay almost anywhere, and I don't want to get stuck spinning my wheels in studies troubleshooting outdated technology that is basically irrelevant in modern networks (as far as I know).

I enjoy learning and troubleshooting the unknown, but if it's just going to be a pit fall to forming peers and such, I'd rather just kiss the investment goodbye so I can stay on track.

Opinions greatly appreciated, thank you in advance for any input!

EDIT:

Added expandable thumbnail of logical topology (configured for OSPF at the moment), for some reason it's showing 2 thumbnails, not sure exactly how I broke that function but go me

nice343

It's a necessity for the exam so I recommend you configure. The lab looks familiar, are you studying from Chris Bryant books?

fredrikjj

You could just learn some basic FR using GNS3 if you don't have the serial interfaces to run it in your physical lab. However, if I were you I would instead learn DMVPN to a decent level and just replace Frame Relay with DMVPN in the labs you're doing. You'll find that many of the routing issues that the old FR labs talk about are directly applicable to DMVPN, depending on what DMVPN configuration you have.

ande0255

nice343 wrote: »

It's a necessity for the exam so I recommend you configure. The lab looks familiar, are you studying from Chris Bryant books?

I actually am going through his video series currently, just finished going through the entire CCNA refresh to get myself back up to speed, and now starting on the CCNP ROUTE portion of the series. Also have ROUTE simplified for reading, I figure between those and heavy labbing should hopefully be enough. I also have the INE series at my disposal through my company, but I didn't really dig the speakers presentation, so I ended up sticking with Chris Bryant.

I've come to terms with the fact that with my current job my fuses are all but blown after the work day, so I need to make those hours that I can get in good solid study time count - Thank you both for responses +1