Real world

sainth

Can anyone tell me what's the difference of a real world network settings from home laboratory settings? And also what protocol you ussually use? I'm just curious on what's the difference, because in Cisco Academy, the teacher always say that what you're doing at laboratory, it's also the same thing that you will do in real world.

Thank you

LOkrasa

Its a little of both honestly... what you are doing in your lab IS what you will be doing in the real world. The hands on stuff does not change... you type the same commands/etc. However, you dont just choose a protocol because you think its "cool." The protocols, all of them, have strenghts and weaknesses in different applications so you take into account the network, its possible future growth direction, etc and choose the best one to do the job. I dont think that one is favored over the other just because its popular or common... We use EIGRP and most of the companies I worked for over the past used OSPF but the two were totally different in size/structure so one was more suited then the other. I hope that helps you out...

gojericho0

In the real world you normally don't get to start from scratch and sometime are inheriting an environment. This is really where you learn the most because a lot of times best practices aren't followed and their is a real lack of documentation. You really can learn a lot this way however because there is a lot of reverse engineering and tweaking done.

For example one of the networks I am managing now is a multipoint frame-relay network using static routes. I am in the process of coming up with a proposal of making everything p2p and using a dynamic protocol to make things a lot more robust and automated

sainth

Thank you for the reply, it really helps me know that it's almost the same. So this is also mean that if you inherit a network or a company and if they want to upgrade the routers and switches, all you have to do is to copy and paste the configuration from old routers and paste it on the new one? Of course double check too the settings like s0... and F0 and so on and so forth just to make sure you're doing it the correct ports.

Slowhand

I look at labs vs. the real world this way:

Labs are set up in such a way as to take full advantage of the equipment and software you're running to solve problems, in order for you to learn. (Do your best: learn.)

The real world is set up in such a way that the equipment and software was created to solve problems that arise, in order for things to run properly. (Do your job: solve problems and create new methods/technologies.)