How can I practice CISCO commands?

MTLChrisLEE

Hey guys,

I'm studying CCNA R&S myself as a hobby.
I'm wondering if there is any way to practice CISCO commands without CISCO gear.

So far, I've learnt basic commands like enabling telnet access and enabling SSH access.

I'm watching tutorials but as you may know, just watching videos are not helpful for getting familiarized with commands.

What should I do?

Thank you in advance and have a nice day!

wseyller

Packet tracer and GNS3

dontstop

Packet Tracer (PT) is the best and closest thing you can get to real thing without going putting a lot of effort into buying gear. Once your start to exceed the ability of PT then by that stage look into something like GNS3

MacGuffin

MTLChrisLEE wrote: »

I'm wondering if there is any way to practice CISCO commands without CISCO gear.

Is there a reason you do not wish to invest in Cisco gear? For a modest investment of perhaps $100 you can get 2 or 3 pieces of Cisco gear to play with. Just $30 should get you something useful if you know where to look, which is about the price of a good reference book and (IMHO) just as valuable. One place I've bought a number of pieces of equipment is Cables and Kits ( http://www.cablesandkits.com/ ), I'm not a paid endorser just a happy customer.

I've allowed my Cisco certification to lapse and I'm now thinking I should get back into it. When studying before I know that having real equipment was very valuable. I got a few good problem sets and worked through them on real equipment. I lucked out though, I was in the right place at the right time and was able to grab a pile of old Cisco gear for something like $120. I bought a few more pieces since then which over the years totaled nearly $1000. I know I went overboard in some of what I bought but I justified this gear in the following ways:
- This is an investment, not only in my education but in monetary value. I can use this for my studies and then potentially sell it again for not much less than I bought it.
- Simulators are great but some aspects of setting up Cisco gear cannot be simulated. Part of figuring out what went wrong is knowing that you could have the wrong cable, a cable in the wrong port, etc. and this requires real hardware.
- Some of this equipment I use in my home network. Rather than buying new consumer gear I'll buy used Cisco gear. This is effectively a zero cost way to play with Cisco equipment since I'd have to buy something to hook up my computers so I buy something Cisco to fill in and make setting it up part of my studies.

Again, I went overboard with the gear I bought. With a modest cost you should be able to get a handful of Cisco kit to play with which, IMHO, no simulator can compete with. To me the desire to get Cisco certified without real Cisco equipment is like getting a license to drive without buying a car. It can be done, there are simulators you can use, but at some point you'll need the real thing or you'll miss on some important details.