Cisco 6509 for Home Lab

I spotted someone selling some of these for around $450(equivalent in euros).

Fully populated chassis with 1 supervisor 1A card, 6 10/100 line cards and 2 psu. That was an example of one of them, I have asked him to confirm if the supervisors are different versions in any of the other chassis he has.

My question is, are these of any use for a CCIE home lab? We use these at work so it would be pretty nice to be able to have one in a home lab to get some practice on.

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Turgon

StrontyDog wrote: »

I spotted someone selling some of these for around $450(equivalent in euros).

Fully populated chassis with 1 supervisor 1A card, 6 10/100 line cards and 2 psu. That was an example of one of them, I have asked him to confirm if the supervisors are different versions in any of the other chassis he has.

My question is, are these of any use for a CCIE home lab? We use these at work so it would be pretty nice to be able to have one in a home lab to get some practice on.

Its a router so why not. Problems are space and noise. I think it would be cool to get one just for practice really. Get some used blades and it could be useful, ideally a couple of FWSMs and join a pair of 6500's together.

chrisone

Going that route will be totally worth it if you can afford it. You will need to get additional cards like Turgon said. However remember, depending on how far you go in your studies , treat this like an investment.

StrontyDog

The FWSM cards are looking pretty expensive used at 3000euro.

What else were you thinking would be useful?

I'll see what cards are in the rest of the 6509s this guy is selling, maybe I'll get lucky and there's something other than supervisor 1As and 10/100 line cards. Those seem to be pretty cheap on ebay anyway(50euro) so it's probably not working as good value as it seemed initially.

shodown

how much is power where you live. Those suckers can eat up a bunch of power.

froggy3132000

cheap, hopefully the pros outweigh the cons for your situation.

does the price include shipping?

Turgon

StrontyDog wrote: »

The FWSM cards are looking pretty expensive used at 3000euro. What else were you thinking would be useful?

I'll see what cards are in the rest of the 6509s this guy is selling, maybe I'll get lucky and there's something other than supervisor 1As and 10/100 line cards. Those seem to be pretty cheap on ebay anyway(50euro) so it's probably not working as good value as it seemed initially.

Try dual supervisors, old FWSM and CSM versions etc.

StrontyDog

shodown wrote: »

how much is power where you live. Those suckers can eat up a bunch of power.

Well it's definately not cheap anyway, running two of them would probably add a fair bit to the monthly electricity bill. That's definately something I was thinking myself....

froggy31320000 wrote:

cheap, hopefully the pros outweigh the cons for your situation.

does the price include shipping?

No but I can drive there in a couple of hours so I'd just go have a look and make sure everything is working before I pick them up.

Turgon wrote:

Try dual supervisors, old FWSM and CSM versions etc.

Seems they aren't common on ebay. I've been searching through the completed and active listings and have only found stuff at big prices. I thought a second supervisor was just for redundancy?

Thanks for the advice, I think I might end up giving them a miss though as I already have a couple of 3560s arriving this week and it might be overkill having two 6509s considering power, size and noise.

yuriz43

Way overkill for a home lab in my opinion. The costs in power and line cards, noise, heavy to move around, etc...

The most *real* hardware you should get is a few 3550s or 3560s. Everything else should be done in Dynamips/GNS3. I know virtual labs are not for everybody, but the hybrid 3550/dynamips lab is the way to go. Trust me on this.
Another practical option is rack rentals. But you must be very disciplined, and get the most out of your rack time for this to be worth it.

On the other hand, if your work has spare gear, and spare rack space & power. Well, by all means, power it up

EdTheLad

You couldn't pay be to take a 6509 home.Virtual routers are the future.I've got a test lab full of CRSs, 7600's, 6500's,asr9k etc, i still prefer to use iou or dynamips.

Turgon

StrontyDog wrote: »

Well it's definately not cheap anyway, running two of them would probably add a fair bit to the monthly electricity bill. That's definately something I was thinking myself....

No but I can drive there in a couple of hours so I'd just go have a look and make sure everything is working before I pick them up.

Seems they aren't common on ebay. I've been searching through the completed and active listings and have only found stuff at big prices. I thought a second supervisor was just for redundancy?

Thanks for the advice, I think I might end up giving them a miss though as I already have a couple of 3560s arriving this week and it might be overkill having two 6509s considering power, size and noise.

Yep for redundancy. Great for practicing maintenance and observing how to go from a single sup to a dual solution. The cards are no doubt expensive even older versions. It most likely isn't practical to endure the noise and space requirements of these routers. Have you looked at virtualising? Check Ed's post further up about all that.

StrontyDog

I have read about using dynamips on a linux box and I think I will set it up definately just to play around with it.

I have two 3560s and two 2950s for CCNP study and I may end up just using GNS3/Dynamips for the router side of things but I would like to get the physical equipment if possible.

They should have some lab equipment at work available for us to use in time also which includes 6500 etc so I think avoiding having a monster switch at home is probably a good idea.

yuriz43

Go the Linux Box/Dynamips route, and get a few Quad-Port Network Cards, so that you can connect your virtual routers to your real switches. ( $30 on ebay for the Sun HME ).

Let me give you a few reasons why dynamips/GNS3 is so great. ( yes I am fanboy. And it just breaks my heart to see people clunking around with real gear when they don't need to).

#1
You can easily packet capture any link, at any time! This alone is SUCH a fantastic feature. With just the click of a button you can open up wireshark and start sniffing a link. This is arguably the most powerful tool for learning HOW a protocol operates at the lowest level. Many debug commands have limited verbosity, and may not show you the gritty details you're looking for. Combine this feature with the RFCs and you will truly understand how a protocol operates.

#2
You can setup neatx, for persistent remote logins (X11 over SSH, think rdesktop for linux). You will be able to access your labs at any time, from anywhere, without having to shut anything down. This Application is simply awesomeness in a bottle.

#3
Study ON-DEMAND. Got limited time? Have a bursty study schedule? I built my own labs for every single topology you could think of! OSPF, EIGRP, Multicast, BGP, L3 MPLS VPN, MPLS-TE, EoMPLS, Ipv6. You name the technology, and I have a lab built for it!! All of these labs are saved to disk, and can be brought up in 10 seconds. Example: Lets say you're reading about BGP, and the text/book/document is some what vague on a particular topic, and you want to just double check the behavior of a certain command or operation. Fire up gns3, spawn a few routers or load a pre-saved BGP topology, and boom, 2 seconds later you can verify, and then get back to reading.

networker050184

If you have a 3560 no point in getting a 6500 at all. Especially not with Sup 1a.

StrontyDog

yuriz43 wrote: »

Go the Linux Box/Dynamips route, and get a few Quad-Port Network Cards, so that you can connect your virtual routers to your real switches. ( $30 on ebay for the Sun HME ).

Let me give you a few reasons why dynamips/GNS3 is so great. ( yes I am fanboy. And it just breaks my heart to see people clunking around with real gear when they don't need to).

#1
You can easily packet capture any link, at any time! This alone is SUCH a fantastic feature. With just the click of a button you can open up wireshark and start sniffing a link. This is arguably the most powerful tool for learning HOW a protocol operates at the lowest level. Many debug commands have limited verbosity, and may not show you the gritty details you're looking for. Combine this feature with the RFCs and you will truly understand how a protocol operates.

#2
You can setup neatx, for persistent remote logins (X11 over SSH, think rdesktop for linux). You will be able to access your labs at any time, from anywhere, without having to shut anything down. This Application is simply awesomeness in a bottle.

#3
Study ON-DEMAND. Got limited time? Have a bursty study schedule? I built my own labs for every single topology you could think of! OSPF, EIGRP, Multicast, BGP, L3 MPLS VPN, MPLS-TE, EoMPLS, Ipv6. You name the technology, and I have a lab built for it!! All of these labs are saved to disk, and can be brought up in 10 seconds. Example: Lets say you're reading about BGP, and the text/book/document is some what vague on a particular topic, and you want to just double check the behavior of a certain command or operation. Fire up gns3, spawn a few routers or load a pre-saved BGP topology, and boom, 2 seconds later you can verify, and then get back to reading.

Thanks for the tips. I'll bookmark your post for later research of the stuff you mentioned. I did see some videos from someone who had built a similar setup. What model nics did you use? Do you run it on Ubuntu?

Your arguments are winning me over, it would be an excuse to upgrade my pc and use the old motherboard, cpu and memory for a linux box.

Forsaken_GA

EdTheLad wrote: »

You couldn't pay be to take a 6509 home.Virtual routers are the future.I've got a test lab full of CRSs, 7600's, 6500's,asr9k etc, i still prefer to use iou or dynamips.

I'd take one home if it came loaded with a sup720-3bxl. Anything less in a supervisor engine is pointless. I certainly wouldn't bother with a Sup1 or Sup2.

yuriz43

I use the SUN 501-4366 Quad Port. It has 100Mbps ports, but for a lab NIC it is perfectly fine.

For the OS I run Debian. Ubuntu might be a little easier if you're new to Linux and would like to have GUI tools for configuring the system (The user space is actually based on the Debian distribution).

In terms of hardware, I have a 1.8ghz core2duo CPU, and 2 gigs of ram. I'm able to run 10+ routers without any issues.

I actually sold my gaming rig because I didn't need all of the power. What I have is just fine.

StrontyDog wrote: »

Thanks for the tips. I'll bookmark your post for later research of the stuff you mentioned. I did see some videos from someone who had built a similar setup. What model nics did you use? Do you run it on Ubuntu?

Your arguments are winning me over, it would be an excuse to upgrade my pc and use the old motherboard, cpu and memory for a linux box.

StrontyDog

yuriz43 wrote: »

I use the SUN 501-4366 Quad Port. It has 100Mbps ports, but for a lab NIC it is perfectly fine.

For the OS I run Debian. Ubuntu might be a little easier if you're new to Linux and would like to have GUI tools for configuring the system (The user space is actually based on the Debian distribution).

In terms of hardware, I have a 1.8ghz core2duo CPU, and 2 gigs of ram. I'm able to run 10+ routers without any issues.

I actually sold my gaming rig because I didn't need all of the power. What I have is just fine.

I have used both debian and ubuntu before so I should be able to figure it out once I get back into the swing of using linux again. My current pc is a core2duo 3.16ghz with 4gb of ram so I shouldn't have any hassle running it.

I think I might dust off a spare hdd and install debian on there and see how I like it before I think about investing in routers.

chrisone

yuriz43 wrote: »

I use the SUN 501-4366 Quad Port. It has 100Mbps ports, but for a lab NIC it is perfectly fine.

For the OS I run Debian. Ubuntu might be a little easier if you're new to Linux and would like to have GUI tools for configuring the system (The user space is actually based on the Debian distribution).

In terms of hardware, I have a 1.8ghz core2duo CPU, and 2 gigs of ram. I'm able to run 10+ routers without any issues.

I actually sold my gaming rig because I didn't need all of the power. What I have is just fine.

Quick question, does the linux flavor of GNS3 run into the high CPU issues where you have to run idle pc?

yuriz43

You should be setting idlepc values no matter what platform gns3 is running under.

The easiest way to find a good setting is to spawn a single router, wait for it to fully boot, right click/select idle pc, and use one of the auto-detect values.

chrisone

is there a way to save the idle pc values so you dont constantly calculate new values when you open up a project? i remember you had to save them in the IOS preferences area?

yuriz43

They will save automatically. Or, you can set them in your .net project files.

millworx

I've got a 6509 for my home lab. It's nice but I don't really use it anymore since I've got my 2841 routers and 3750 switches now. Sup1a sucks. I've got redundant Sup 720's. I'm also running gig POE cards in it. I don't remember, but I think with Sup1a you have to run dual catOs with IOS and cannot run native by default. (I might be wrong) So you will have to toggle.

All the gig cards are expensive, the 10/100 cards are cheap (5-10 bucks each).

FWSM is expensive, even the old ones run in the thousands.

Cool thing is you can do more with this than the access layer switches like 3750. You can do ZBFW, run MPLS etc. But not worth the price. Suckers are heavy too.

Unless you are prepared to use it in a production environment I would not get it for a lab, unless you get it for free. The 450 would be better spent

Maced129

EdTheLad wrote: »

You couldn't pay be to take a 6509 home.Virtual routers are the future.I've got a test lab full of CRSs, 7600's, 6500's,asr9k etc, i still prefer to use iou or dynamips.

Do tell about emulating 6500s and ASRs!

QHalo

Maced129 wrote: »

Do tell about emulating 6500s and ASRs!

I don't think that's what he meant...

Maced129

QHalo wrote: »

I don't think that's what he meant...

Just re-read, and LOL, my bad. please disregard my posts!!

QHalo

Maced129 wrote: »

Just re-read, and LOL, my bad. please disregard my posts!!