How much have you spent on your lab?

GeoDude

I've spent about £1600 on books and lab hardware so I can practise for the BSCI/BCMSN labs.

Just wondering if you guys are spending the same sorta cash to study?

kafifi13

How much is that vs. Dollars? I think all in all i spend about $1,000 for equipment and books. Well worth it.

rakem

i have spent just over $1000AUD for my 4 routers and both cisco press BSCI books.

i found about the magic of dynamips after i bought all my hardware thou... doh!

(it is good to have real routers around thou)

wastedtime

I have probably spent about 7000-7500 plus I still got to buy a lot more books and a little bit more equipment. But this is for MCSE and CCNP also I spent a bit on ISDN stuff because I personally wanted to understand more about it as I am sure I will run into it eventually (and I just like hands on). But these deployments help money wise as I clear about 90% of my pay check during them.

kafifi13

rakem wrote:

i have spent just over $1000AUD for my 4 routers and both cisco press BSCI books.

i found about the magic of dynamips after i bought all my hardware thou... doh!

(it is good to have real routers around thou)

I don't care what anybody says...nothing is better than the real hardware. Seriously. Not only do you get real hands on training but during your search for equipment (on Ebay) you start to learn about the different hardware and what they do and don't do. Before when i was using a simulator i didn't knwo anything. Now i know enough.

This helped me out alot on job interviews as i could tell them i had experiance with my own equipment. They would be impressed when i would tell them exactly what i had. I've heard people in teh CCNA forum talk about how there is no reason to buy equipment and they can get by with a simulator. No offense but i think those people are just looking to pass and really don't want to gain the knowledge you would get with hands on experiance. don't get me wrong...it's no in everyones budget. This stuff is expensive and it took alot of saving up on my part. It was worth it in the end as i landed the job i wanted which not only made me happy but paid me more money.

dtlokee

Regardless of what you spend it's worth it. If you do it correctly you can almost get all your money back if you resell the gear. You don't need the latest and greatest equipment either. The 2500's and 4500/4700 series routers are more than enough to test and practice 90% of the routing protocols, multicast routing, frame relay and so on.

For my school I buy equipment, keep it for 3 years, write it off, and then sell it on EBay. After 3 years I am able to sell it for 50-75% of what I paid for it, and I can use the lost value as a tax writeoff. The gear costs almost nothing, the SmartNet contracts are the expensive part for me.

wastedtime

Honestly, spend what you can on equipment but there is no sense in putting yourself in the poor house over buying it either. I personally have a lot of free money after putting most of it in investments and paying what I need and watching what I spend (Like I said in the first post though deployment helps when you have very little to pay back in the states). If you plan on perusing a career in this stuff though, you need hands on. So take advantage of whatever hands on experience you get.

Netstudent

I have spent about 900 on all my stuff. Thats books, 4 2600's 3 2900's 8 WIC-1t's. I would like to get a Termserv and a 2600XM though. Something I can run SDM on. Ebay and smart shopping is the way to go.

keenon

rough guess is about 4k but this has taken about 2-3 years, with sold and replacements

networker050184

Equipment is definatley worth the price. Like kafifi13 said buying the equipment and hooking it all up is a good lesson in its own. Using all the debugs are vital to understanding the way things work and its not always supported on sims. Dynamips is very good also. If you don't have any experience with routers I wouldn't suggest this be your only resource for labs though. I bring my laptop along and can run a lab anytime I have free time which is what I like about it.

LOkrasa

kafifi13 wrote:

rakem wrote:

i have spent just over $1000AUD for my 4 routers and both cisco press BSCI books.

i found about the magic of dynamips after i bought all my hardware thou... doh!

(it is good to have real routers around thou)

I don't care what anybody says...nothing is better than the real hardware. Seriously. Not only do you get real hands on training but during your search for equipment (on Ebay) you start to learn about the different hardware and what they do and don't do. Before when i was using a simulator i didn't knwo anything. Now i know enough.

This helped me out alot on job interviews as i could tell them i had experiance with my own equipment. They would be impressed when i would tell them exactly what i had. I've heard people in teh CCNA forum talk about how there is no reason to buy equipment and they can get by with a simulator. No offense but i think those people are just looking to pass and really don't want to gain the knowledge you would get with hands on experiance. don't get me wrong...it's no in everyones budget. This stuff is expensive and it took alot of saving up on my part. It was worth it in the end as i landed the job i wanted which not only made me happy but paid me more money.

VERY well put. I feel EXACTLY the same way and honestly I did mention this in my interview as well and I think it helped tons in me landing the position. I think once I get tons of handson exp I will go with Dynamips to get some more exp with more hardware but to me nothing beats the real thing....

rakem

kafifi13 wrote:

I don't care what anybody says...nothing is better than the real hardware. Seriously. Not only do you get real hands on training but during your search for equipment (on Ebay) you start to learn about the different hardware and what they do and don't do. Before when i was using a simulator i didn't knwo anything. Now i know enough.

yes as i said in my post, having real stuff is good... Dynamips is not a sim thou, its an emulator, thats a massive difference.

I agree that you defiantly need hands on experience with the real thing, i have 4 real routers at home and i use the heaps. But in my dynamips lab i have a massive network of 15+ routers. Try doing this at home with real hardware and you would be paying a fortune, not only in hardware, but also in electricity and storage space gets to be an issue too. Al you need for dynamips is a decent computer.

As i said everyone should have real hardware experience. But i feel that dynamips is more flexible for most people.