CCIE LAB by Sep 2012

Chipsch

I can't vouch for the electricity cost going up quite yet. As far as the cost, if you piece it together instead of buying a pre-built lab you will save at least 50% of the cost you typically see. I think I saw in a post somewhere where someone mentioned that they managed to put theirs together for around 2k. With everything mine came out being just shy of 2500. Not to bad when you can turn most of it when you are done and get a good percentage of what you spent back.

networkjutsu

This is some goal. Good luck! I wish I have the same drive as you do. Getting my mind to stay focus when reading a Cisco book is a task in itself.

x5150

Quick update,
I already missed my target of taking the test in October. There was just not enough time plus I've had to fight my dynamips lab setup for countless hours. It was setup for INE but now working with IPexpert. I attended a 1 week bootcamp for ccie technology and the IPexpert 10 day bootcamp. IPexpert was a great camp, it was eye opening, got my butt kicked and let me know I'm not ready for the lab test. That's fine with me, saved me $1500. Their workbooks are great and you can get video walkthroughs of all the labs. Bootcamps and home studying/labbing puts me at about 500+ hours. I think I will need about 150-200 more hours to make a good 1st attempt at the lab.

mattau

stick with using ubuntu, you will be grateful you went through the learning period when it comes to labs or anything. Just the little things that count when using it like doing little scripts to make your lab cool. You can use ser2net to make your own console server which is pure gold then write a script to open up all your lines at once.
dynamips + real switches = win

dynamips should run easily on it with very few problems. I think the most problems Ive ever had with it was not running it as root when I first started and wondered why i couldnt bridge it to my real switches.

many people use those adapdec 4 port cards but I cant see to find any that are available (for a practical price) and its hard to tell if they will fit into your motherboard. Ive known some people to get them then figure out it doesnt fit in the slots.

Theres lots of good blogs out there with peoples dynamips/switch lab. If i was to build a ccie lab then id probably go down the qinq tunnel method but the quad port nics would be the most ideal solution.

x5150

ubuntu did not work out because it didn't work with trunking on subinterfaces. Quad NIC - Dot1q issue - IEOC - INE's Online Community Installing debian fixed it. I had the 3 quad port nics, but changed to a 3750 as breakout switch qinq.

Zartanasaurus

x5150 wrote: »

ubuntu did not work out because it didn't work with trunking on subinterfaces. Quad NIC - Dot1q issue - IEOC - INE's Online Community Installing debian fixed it. I had the 3 quad port nics, but changed to a 3750 as breakout switch qinq.

I run 12.04 and can trunk with subinterfaces on quad nics. When using 3725s I had to use ISL encapsulation when using linux nio. I switched to 7200s because of the multicast bugs but found the trunking stopped working. After I switched to generic nio dot1q worked. Wonder what the underlying issue is here?