CCENT Home Lab - Physical or Virtual?

I am studying and getting ready for my CCENT Exam.
After reading a lot about it, seems to be more about troubleshooting rather than just basic questions. I know the protocols, what they do, and how to subnet, just need to apply it and prepare for those simlets I've read o' so much about.

I am wondering if anyone has a good home lab setup they've used to help them get proper troubleshooting that helped them with the exam. How many routers & switches are adequate? Or would investing in Software be more beneificial in that it's how the tests are conducted?

Any help or suggestions would be much appreaciated!! Thank you

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Comments

rsutton

I used real hardware + dynamips. If I could do it again I would just do it all on Hardware, I felt like I wasted a lot of time getting dynamips working properly. I also had issues with it crashing during my labs. Others here have had good results with Dynamips/Dynagen however.

keenon

outside of the learning curve dynamips is awesome instant lab on most any pc

hexem

I prepared soley on packet tracer 5.2 for my CCENT studies...And it was great for it, you can see into each PDU for each step of encapsulation/decapsulation through the 7 OSI layer model, you can again look into frames as they leave a host and hit a switch, then as it's fowarded onto a router etc.

This really help's with the learning process, altho it doesn't help you're trouble shooting skill's, sometimes it's too easy to rely on checking as to why somethin'g didn't work the way you were expecting, and obviously in the real world you don't always get the chance to pause frames on there way along the network.

Plenty of stuff to play around on, setting up point-to-point leased lines between router's, setting up RIP, static routes, basic router/switch configs.

It's not the best thing out there, but it's free and it does the job.

tiersten

hexem wrote: »

It's not the best thing out there, but it's free and it does the job.

It is only free if you're a student enrolled in the Cisco Network Academy or an alumni.

apena7

Personally, I use software as opposed to hardware -- I guess I'm afraid of bricking an expensive router

mikem2te

apena7 wrote: »

I guess I'm afraid of bricking an expensive router

They are pretty hard to brick in reality. Even if you delete the configuration and IOS from flash there is a back door (rommon) that lets you get the router backup and running. It's is a freightening process everybody should do atleast once.

I would certinaly recommend hardware if you intend to go further in Cisco studies. PacketTracer and dynamips are good tools but learning how to handle physical devices is so important. It teaches you alot of realworld troubleshooting as things like broken cables, serial cables the wrong way around etc trip you up.

Routers to look out for at the moment are 2600XM series, 1721, 1760. There are cheaper options out there but these currently have a feature set that can take you a long way into future studies.

Switches 2950.

thenjduke

I would go hardware base it has alot more to offer.

tiersten

mikem2te wrote: »

They are pretty hard to brick in reality. Even if you delete the configuration and IOS from flash there is a back door (rommon) that lets you get the router backup and running. It's is a freightening process everybody should do atleast once.

Just don't set a password, disable password recovery and then forget the password. Some of them are a bit tricky to break back into ROMMON.

Everybody should do a XMODEM upload of IOS anyway. You'll learn not to screw it up after doing that

mengh33

Thank you for the advice! I think I will go with the actual hardware but check out the packet tracer.

Now just wondering of there are any good websites that give free lab examples of ICND1 so I can try to implement and troubleshoot, and that give how many routers/switches you need for the labs?

Just joined the forum and thanks for all the good advice, glad I found this!!

SMR511

Me personally, I'd go with three decent routers (3600,2600,2500 series etc...) and a couple 2950 switches (I'd stay away from the 2900's or lower).

Something about physically connecting the DCE/DTE cables, figuring out which end was which, setting the encapsulations and clock rates, doing a bunch of labs etc...etc...It all (ok most of it) just made sense after that.

veritas_libertas

tiersten wrote: »

Just don't set a password, disable password recovery and then forget the password. Some of them are a bit tricky to break back into ROMMON.

Everybody should do a XMODEM upload of IOS anyway. You'll learn not to screw it up after doing that

I have done it once, never again...

johnwest43

I used a sim for icnd1. For ICND2 I have 2 2950 switches 1 2924 switch 2 2501 routers a 2620xm and a 2611xm. I have found that the real hardware is the way to go. Plus you can use the hardware after you are done studying!!

For the labs, there is a post from black ninja that I just pushed back to the first page, take a look at it .

John

Forsaken_GA

tiersten wrote: »

Everybody should do a XMODEM upload of IOS anyway. You'll learn not to screw it up after doing that

Amen to that. Preach it, brother!