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home lab ideas

shuffles62shuffles62 Member Posts: 14 ■□□□□□□□□□
in CCNA & CCENT
i'm looking to build a lab at home and wanted some suggestions. This will be to help me finish up ccna, but then i will definitely be pursuing ccnp or possibly voip.

based on what i've read it seems like its definitely worth the extra cash to pick up a pair of 2612s. any other thoughts?

also can anyone vouch for ciscokits.com? Or can you give any other vendor suggestions?
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    johnnynodoughjohnnynodough Member Posts: 634
    I havent personally bought my equipment from ciscokits, but they do have great offers and are highly recommended. Last I looked they were out of 2500 series routers. I built up my 2501's from 4/4 memory and version 5 bootroms to 16/16 and version 10c for about 120 bucks total cost per router.

    Nice thing is that when they have 2500 series routers they come with max mem/ latest bootrom, and latest IOS on cd. Getting the IOS can be the hardest part. I lucked out, being able to register with CCO through my employer giving me access the IOS upgrade planner. Otherwise, it can be tough to get a good full copy. IOShunter works as advertised, but I have had many failed checksums because people had incomplete images on their tftp servers. Kinda like when napster was alive and kicking in the free days, and you would download a song, only to listen to it and found out its missing a minute :p
    Go Hawks - 7 and 2

    2 games againts San Fran coming up, oh yeah baby, why even play? just put then in the win category and call it good :p
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    qsubqsub Member Posts: 303
    Wow, how come those prices are so low? I always thought cisco equipment costed $3000 and up?
    World Cup 2006 - Zidane - Never Forget.
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    johnnynodoughjohnnynodough Member Posts: 634
    2500 series are end of life, dont support fast ethernet, limited memory.

    They work great for you CCNA labs though.
    Go Hawks - 7 and 2

    2 games againts San Fran coming up, oh yeah baby, why even play? just put then in the win category and call it good :p
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    wildfirewildfire Member Posts: 654
    2500's are great for CCNA lab, they also make a good edition to a CCNP lab, for CCNP also consider some 2620/2621 for fast ethernet, a 2950 switch, and possibly a 3620. For voice a 2612 is good enough as a starting point. Ebay is always a good place to buy equipment, I buy and sell on their all the time, make sure that you get an output of the show version from the vendor, if they give you some crap excuse like its boxed up etc, then shy away.
    Looking for CCIE lab study partnerts, in the UK or Online.
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    tunerXtunerX Member Posts: 447 ■■■□□□□□□□
    You should get 3600 or 2600 routers, if you want to tackle voice. I have some 3810s that are good for h.323 gateway/gatekeeper and then all of the IOS versions that I run have VoIP support. The 1751 is also good for voice.
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    NetwurkNetwurk Member Posts: 1,155 ■■■■■□□□□□
    For CCNA, the 2500's are fine and the cost is reasonable. Third-party memory is inexpensive if you need to bring them up to max memory.

    Average prices on Ebay:

    2501 $60
    2507 $40
    2514 $90
    2516 $40

    Make sure you get transceivers for your ethernet I/F's.
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