Todd Lammle's Virtual Lab CD in his CCNA 802 book?

I was just wondering if Todd Lammle's CCNA Virtual Lab CD in his CCNA 802 book would be good enough for lab purposes? The equipment listed that you can use is:

1900 switch
2950 switch
2600 Router
and up to 6 hosts

You can't have more than 19 (i think) devices at one time when building a network, but I don't think you'd need to for CCNA studying purposes.

Any thoughts?

Also, does anyone like Todd Lammle's CCNA 802 book and questions? Would that book in combination with the Sybex books (and CD's and videos which are included) be good enough for successfully passing the CCNA. I guess I'm looking for people's thought's on these study materials. Thanks in advance!

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Comments

Silver Bullet

What may be enough for one may not be enough for another.

The best approach would be to study the materials you have and if you feel that there are still questions regarding some topics then find another source and study it.

I am currently going through the Sybex 6th edition CCNA book by Lammle and like how it is written. Not certain that it is going to be the end all be all though. I may have more insight when I reach the end of the book.

networker050184

Real equipment and the Cisco Press Odom books are the best way to go in my opinion.

You could pass with sims and other books, but the do you want to just pass? Or do you want to have a deep understanding of the technologies and be able to implement them on REAL Cisco devices?

Jay31

networker050184 wrote:

Real equipment and the Cisco Press Odom books are the best way to go in my opinion.

You could pass with sims and other books, but the do you want to just pass? Or do you want to have a deep understanding of the technologies and be able to implement them on REAL Cisco devices?

I definitely want to have a deep and real understanding. But, I also want to pass. With that being said, I have access to tons of switches and routers at my work and can sign any of them out to take home (they won't do that for anyone) and be able to set up real labs. Our network administrator also says that we can set up labs here at work (just not on the network).

I work with SAN's, servers, array controllers, fiber channel switches, backup exec stuff and all the cool windows environment stuff. But, my job requires that I also be the backup network admin and I want to be able to fully support that along with my the other parts of my job (although, we have statewide personnel that can dial in to any switch in the state and do configuring at any time).

My experience with CISCO is such that I've put a port on a VLAN before...can ensure things are up and running somewhat properly...no real experience with configurations (mostly observation). I think the CCNA will certainly help me with my duties and make things easier on the current network admin.

My network admin and myself are taking the CCNA in April. Our network admin is wonderful. He's very diligent and intelligent with CISCO, but he's just never taken the exam. He's a real engineer and has done some really cool things with our network. Anyway, thanks for the replies.

bmauro

IMO - and thats all it is - just my opinion.

People who want to "get into" Cisco and still are green should spend as much time with physical "real" hardware. Understand it, get comforatble with it. Once you know your way around the hardware you can then move over to dynamips (forget the simulators).

I've never worked with a simulator that I liked or that behaved like it should have. Dynamips on the other hand has been nothing short of a miracle.

Turgon

Get yourself a couple of 2500's from work or some such and start working with them at home. As for the book from the man with the shiney head..hehe..it's ok to get you through the exam but from what I remember it teaches to the test and Todd's understanding of ISDN in the old books was wrong..so use a wide range of resources. CCO works.

Good luck with the studies, sounds like work offers good avenues for you to learn things.