Equipment Questions

Hi guys,

I've been reading through the forum and found most of the advice very useful. I'm preparing for the CCNA 801 exam and fortunately was given 3 2610 routers with serial card to which I brought a 2900 switch to complete the set-up.

Q1. I read somewhere that one can get by without the switch is this correct?

Q2. Also, the equipments all came with IOS ver 11.3 will this be suffient for the test?

Q3. I have 3 console cables for the routers and 2 DTE end cables will these be ok? I think I may need a DCE ended cable too but not sure.

Any advice will be very much appreciated.

An Associate in the making.

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Comments

remyforbes777

You really want to have a switch although I think that some of the 2600's have switch ports. You will want to have a switch to practice VLAN's, VTP, spanning tree and what not. You probably want to try and upgrade to the latest IOS which is 12.3 or 12.4. If you are going to do back to back WAN connections you probably want a DCE to DTE cable.

outstream

1. you need to practice on switch to master VLAN stuff. How to make VLANS, how to propagate information, configuring ISL etc, it all comes under switch. so you need a working switch.

2. i think 11.3 is ok

3. you`ll need a cable with both DTE and DCE ends to connect routers. this is because DCE end is used to provide clocking and DTE end is used as termination point. you need one cable with one DCE end and one DTE end to connect two routers.

cyberpimp28

remyforbes777 wrote:

You really want to have a switch although I think that some of the 2600's have switch ports. You will want to have a switch to practice VLAN's, VTP, spanning tree and what not. You probably want to try and upgrade to the latest IOS which is 12.3 or 12.4. If you are going to do back to back WAN connections you probably want a DCE to DTE cable.

Thanks guys for the quick response.

To Remyforbes777: Won't I need to have a cisco customer account to upgrade my kit? I already have a user login to Cisco's website.

remyforbes777

Yeah if you want to get the latest IOS. Or there are other ways.

mgeorge

cyberpimp28 wrote:

Hi guys,

I've been reading through the forum and found most of the advice very useful. I'm preparing for the CCNA 801 exam and fortunately was given 3 2610 routers with serial card to which I brought a 2900 switch to complete the set-up.

Q1. I read somewhere that one can get by without the switch is this correct?

Q2. Also, the equipments all came with IOS ver 11.3 will this be suffient for the test?

Q3. I have 3 console cables for the routers and 2 DTE end cables will these be ok? I think I may need a DCE ended cable too but not sure.

Any advice will be very much appreciated.

An Associate in the making.

Wellfirst off a 2900XL switch would be sufficient enough, also 11.3 IOS will not work, you need at least 12.0T to support dot1q trunk lines to preform inter-vlan routing (router-on-a-stick) it would be nice to get the latest version of enterprise if possible, which for 2600's would be c2600-j1s3-mz.123-22.bin, try to find an IOS with j1s3 in it if possible, if not then just use IP Plus which is c2600-is-mz.xxx

you only need 1 console cable for your laptop or w/e and need as many DB60 back to back cables as you have per serial connection on your routers. a DB60 cable has 1 DTE and 1 DCE end, you configure the clock rate on DCE.

For more info on IOS Versions and feature sets goto;
http://www.techexams.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19766

Darthn3ss

you're more than likely going to need IOS 12 or better.

Paul Boz

Keep the switch. Heck, I'd probably buy a few more 2900 series switches so that you can support VLAN/STP in your lab. If you don't want the switch I'll buy it if it's ultra cheap

Darthn3ss

i got 3 2924's for around $100....ebay for the win.