CCNA home lab Advice

beach5563

I am preparing for CCNA again. I took it twicw a few years ago and got 707 the first time and 809 the second time. I have been through a few CCNA and CCNP classes and have some hands on with the routers. I have mostly a telecommunications background but now everything is going Cisco VOIP so you have to have CCNA these days. I am curently working in aNOC as an availability analyst. I have two cisco 1720 routers, routersim network visualizer, and the chris bryant videos from thebryantadvantage.com. and the sybex book. I was wondering if I can use the two routers I have plus the simulator. I heard that you need at least one switch to get some routing done with and two switches so you can do stp, vlan type stuff. I plan on taking the test around the middle of Oct.
Thanks

Komkommer

1720 don't support intervlan routing and you'll probably want to buy two serial wics. Shouldn't be that expansive. As for a switch buy a 2924XL-EN or 2912XL-EN (the type that supports dot1q, if you wish to buy a router capable of dot1q) You can buy a 2950 but they're more expensive. You'll need much more equipment if you intend to do case studies.

A simulator is always the cheapest solution. But playing with real routers is always fun.

cristi.grigore

You can try this 7200/3600/2600 emulator here: http://dynagen.org/

You just need to get a valid copy of a Cisco IOS for the 7200 series and go through the tutorial: http://dynagen.org/tutorial.htm