Boson Netsim vs Pearson sim

pujan96

Hi guys,

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the boson netsim and could give any recommendations on it.

I am looking to get the one for ICND2, I used the pearson net sim for ICND1 but found it was very repetitive and only focused on typing in the write command, can anyone recommend Boson?

Thanks

WastedHat

I've never used Boson sorry. But I can recommend GNS3 and Packet Tracer, you'll have much more freedom than Pearson and they're free.

Danielh22185

I don't recommend using their simulator, it's WAY too basic and is not an emulator like GNS3 / VIRL. Now, with that said I did try it out a bit when I was studying for CCNA about 8 years ago (when GNS was much less popular) and if you are super green to the tech / industry it could prove to be a decent introductory platform as it is very exercise driven. Again though you can get some basic lab manuals and do the same on a much more granular scale with GNS3 / VIRL. Also I would not suggest packet tracer either as it is just another simulator like Netsim from Boson.

Key item to note with simulators:

They will not behave the same way as emulators and typically not allow you do do everything you would be able to do on an emulations. Emulators is effectually running the iOS as separate processing virtual machines. You're only limitations usually faced with emulators are when it comes time to try to emulate hardware functions which obviously cannot be 100% reproduced inside software. Yet there has been some improvements even with that via GNS3/VIRL using IOS over IOUs.

joshuamurphy75

I used Pearson's sim, and liked it for learning the basics, but it does not cover CCNP level topics. I switched to NetSim, and have been disappointed. It gives you enough to learn the material, but the layout has a lot of wasted space. The map and menu take up most of the screen, and the instructions need to be on a second monitor. Maybe I'm overly picky, but buying a few routers off of eBay and using Putty seems to be much better. I have not tried VIRL.

dontstop

Both are pretty good and I used both for my CCENT/CCNA. I'd recommend starting with learning the basics in Pearson first then moving onto Boson. Pearson's is very basic and repetitive, also some of the activities are laborious with 30-40 odd steps with a lot of hand holding. Boson is a little more objective based but the only problem is that with the open endedness of the tasks it will sting you if your configuration doesn't identically match what they expect. If there is 10 ways to configure something yours must match theirs to be marked correct. I'd also recommend budgeting a lot more time than you expect. Even at a pace of 3-5 labs a day, you could easily spend 2 months doing them.