Router Lab

in CCNA & CCENT
Okay, I'm studying for the CCENT and then the CCNA. I just bought a couple of routers so that I could do some hands on labs and they came in this week. I have two 2501 and one 2620 with CSU/DSU card and ISDN/BRI card. I am watching CBT Nuggets and reading Sybex CCENT. I plan on doing the labs in the book and with the Nuggets, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me the best way to hook this lab up. Thanks in advance for all your input.
Comments
Put the 2501's in the back of the 2620's with the serial cables. I'd put the DCE side on the 2620 (which end you use where matters).
This will allow you to set up serial connections, set up routing (static, rip, eigrp, etc), set up DLCI's and use the 2620 as a service provider router -- pretending you have 2 sites with 2500's.
ISDN is not convered in the exam objectives anymore.
Hope this helps,
NL[/code]
Looks like the WIC-1T's run <$20 and the WIC-2T's run <$50 on eBay.
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You want to connect one end of the serial cable into the Serial0 port.
On the 2620 you will need either 2x WIC-1T modules which look like this:
and you would use this kind of cable since both routers will have the same connector types
If you use 1x WIC-2T in the 2620 it will look like this:
and you would use this kind of cable since the WIC-2T has the Smart Serial connector which is smaller:
So 2501A Serial0 goes to one of the WIC serial ports on the 2620. Then 2501B Serial0 goes to the other WIC serial port. Make sense?
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The WIC-2A/S is a two port SYNC/ASYNC card with a max rate of 128kbps.
The WIC-1 & WIC-2T supports the same ASYNC speed but also supports a SYNC rate of up to 8 Mbps per port. The 2600 series is limited to 1 port at 8 Mbps or 2 at 4 Mbps and all the other slots (including the NM) have to be empty (more powerful/recent routers don't have this limitation).
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Would I use the same cable as the 2T? And would that be sufficient for working with a couple of 1Ts? I'm not sure if any of the routing protocols or something else requires more speed than that.
I also have a WIC 1DSU 56k (again, came with it). Can I do anything interesting with that?
Sorry to the OP for sort of hijacking your thread. At least you get to learn a little about WIC cards
If you come across another DDS card like this (or one of those 2500's - don't remember the exact model - with the internal CSU/DSU) you can make up a cross over cable like this:
Is it really worth it? Probably not, unless you come across one for dirt cheap. It only supports a single 56K channel and can't do timing/channelization, etc that the WIC T1-DSU cards can and that you would use in a T1/T3 configuration.
Edit: Oh and yes it uses the same cable as the WIC-2T (Smart Serial connector)
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