cisco kits or bosson simulator ?

wirelessdude

Hi I am wondering what gives the best bang for the bucks..

Cisco kits 260 USD or the netsim ccna 6.0 simulator 150 USD ??

Paul Boz

Real hardware is great but you can do a ton more with the simulator. I'd say that if you have to pick one or the other I'd go with the simulator. Just the PDF full of labs that comes with the simulator is more than worth it.

Kaminsky

I have been using bosun not beng able to yet afford the real thing yet and your queston is a tricky one really.

Yes the real thing is always best to get your hands on but you are not limited by equipment with a sim and can test proof of concept ideas with ease. For instance, I am studying STP/FSTP/Etherchannels for ccna at the moment so I sim'd 7 interconnected 2950 switches in less than a minute.

However, sims are limited (I know bosun is) with what functions the simulated devices can actually do and arn't acurate in certain situations and if you don't know any better, you might expect the real equipment to act the same. With my 7 switch scenario I found that when I reloaded my lab, bosun gave all my devices a complete new MAC addresses information making all my previous calculation useless. It also can't handle etherchannel.

I imagine if you had the money for a "few" switches and a "few" routers, that would be enough to do without the need of a sim but then what about frame relay, etc.

EdTheLad

Dynamips, which is free, i would advise before investing any money read this forum because if you did you would have already discovered dynamips which is by far the best sim available.All you need is a cisco image.

Netwurk

Actual routers and switches are better in my opinion. More costly in most cases, I guess, but there's nothing like working with the real thing.

My thought is that most techies wind up buying things like switches, routers, and access points anyway. The shiny new Linksys or Netgear model you buy might wind up costing as much as a used Cisco on Ebay.

So why not get some real gear?

Xover

I agree with Mr. Boz. I used the sims, NetVis and Boson, and its really nice to be able to just throw in switches and routers as you please and practice ALOT of different things. They are somewhat limited in the commands you have available but I believe its still worth it. I have never used the Dynamips from above. Maybe I should have read more on this forum too.

That being said, I am in the process now of building a lab at home. My advise on that would be to build it piece by piece instead of buying one of the prebuilts. Most of them come with old equipment. 1900 switches aren't on the exam anymore, only 2950's. I would also buy 2600 routers. Their are things, like intervlan routing among others, that can't be done on 2500's. If you keep your eyes out on ebay, you can get it all cheaper than one of the already built labs and have better equipment. The 2950's are the exception, their still pretty exspensive, but you can get 2924's for pretty cheap and they are at least IOS based switches, unlike the 1900's.

I now have a 2612, a 2610 (both with WIC-1T serial interfaces) and a 2514 that I use as a frame relay switch between the 2. Still working on a switch, I am using a borrowed 2950 for now.

Good luck.

Netwurk

Xover wrote:

Their are things, like intervlan routing among others, that can't be done on 2500's.

You can do inter-vlan routing with 2500s. You just can't do router-on-a-stick