I finally PASSED !!!!! And I few thoughts on Netsims

Whew,

I finally made it!!!!This was a struggle for sure. Just wanted to post a few notes. DO NOT RELY ON NETSIMS for studying. Get access to real equipment or build your own lab. I was relying on the netsim to get me through. As I do not have space right now to build a pod. What a mistake..................There base labs are ok but it is just not the same as the real equipment. And I did not understand this until I rented rack time. WOW 3 days latter I am on to the NP track..............And I feel like I wasted the last 3 months with netsims.....I guess we live and learn. Actually thats why I am posting this maybe it will help someone else to not make the mistakes I made.

Peace,

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Comments

mikej412

Congratulations!

I like to say the simulators are better then nothing.... and way better then a poke in the eye. But yeah, hands on with real equipment works best when learning. And remote rack access/rental is always an option.

Dynamips/Dynagen is good for Routing practice.... the switching side still needs some work.

westy_one

I agree Sims are better than nothing. But they really are not enough. I guess thats the point I am trying to make. Netsims basic labs are a good starting point but that's it- a starting point. The functionality of the netmap is EXTREMELY frustrating.

I wanted to make the point to help someone avoid what I could have avoided had I known. Money for equipment is not the issue I had. It was really a space issue. And I thought netsims was all I needed. Wrong!!!! I also had no idea at the time that you could rent pods

I knew dynamips was out there and Have tried it and found it more useful then netsims.

eastp

Congrats on the pass

Eastp

djmd

westy_one wrote:

I agree Sims are better than nothing. But they really are not enough. I guess thats the point I am trying to make. Netsims basic labs are a good starting point but that's it- a starting point. The functionality of the netmap is EXTREMELY frustrating.

I wanted to make the point to help someone avoid what I could have avoided had I known. Money for equipment is not the issue I had. It was really a space issue. And I thought netsims was all I needed. Wrong!!!! I also had no idea at the time that you could rent pods

I knew dynamips was out there and Have tried it and found it more useful then netsims.

I had a lot of rack time with Global Knowledge and I really don't see what it gave me over Boson Netsim.

djmd

djmd wrote:

I had a lot of rack time with Global Knowledge and I really don't see what it gave me over Boson Netsim.

OK well I take that back

Working on the labs and have run into a problem... basically got a router that I'm getting updates on, according to debug, but the routes aren't going into the table.

That same router that I'm getting updates from is also getting routing info sent to it but isn't putting those routes in it's table. A little frustrating.

I still think that netsim is enough to get by for CCNA - but I wouldn't even think about NP without a significant equipment investment.

Westy_one - congrats on the pass! Would you say that it was netsim's inability to function correctly that sent you down the wrong path?

westy_one

djmd wrote:

djmd wrote:

I had a lot of rack time with Global Knowledge and I really don't see what it gave me over Boson Netsim.

OK well I take that back

Working on the labs and have run into a problem... basically got a router that I'm getting updates on, according to debug, but the routes aren't going into the table.

That same router that I'm getting updates from is also getting routing info sent to it but isn't putting those routes in it's table. A little frustrating.

I still think that netsim is enough to get by for CCNA - but I wouldn't even think about NP without a significant equipment investment.

Westy_one - congrats on the pass! Would you say that it was netsim's inability to function correctly that sent you down the wrong path?

DJ,

It was totally Netsims inability to function correctly that was my demise personally(that and only relying on netsim). Netsim is great for the basic labs and is a good place to start, but where you use the netmap and stray to far from there base labs you run into trouble. Also some of the behavior like typing "route ospf 4" working in netsim is troublesome. If you only typed route and not router on a realy ROUTER you will get an ambiguous command error-that can really be an issue on the test and through you off if you had not been on a real router to see the error. I have seen posting in the forum in the past regarding those issues and it's true. I am not really trying too bash netsim just make people aware of the limitations. I only paid $174 for the netsim ccnp (before the price went up to $499.00) I would not recommend netsims at that price at this point. What I would advise is rack time or building your own lab. Rack if the ccna is all you want but if you want to go further your own lab could be very useful.

Peace

djmd

westy_one wrote:

DJ,

It was totally Netsims inability to function correctly that was my demise personally(that and only relying on netsim). Netsim is great for the basic labs and is a good place to start, but where you use the netmap and stray to far from there base labs you run into trouble. Also some of the behavior like typing "route ospf 4" working in netsim is

Peace

Well, while I did get the RIP problem fixed (forgot to advertise one of the links) I decided to turn RIP off and switch everything to OSPF. Check out this route that is showing up now:

O 255.254.254.255 [120/0] via , 00:05:51

What the hell? It's showing up on two routers, and they aren't getting any of the routes they should. I'm not even trying to go outside of the scope of this lab either.

I failed my first attempt cause I basically did no labwork other than what was in my (worthless) bootcamp. But I have since been using netsim and gone through most all of the labs and feel confident that I will pass this coming monday... sad thing is I don't even remember what my sims were about on the exam... I think when I clicked on the last question and saw "fail" my brain did a memory **** and a clean reboot