home lab question...

ja5983

are 2 Cisco 1601/1603 Routers - 16MB DRAM/16MB FLASH and a catalyst 1924 good enough to do everything i need to learn for the CCNA

ziggy

That's a great question.

I guess, as long as it supports many of the features i.e.all routing protocols asked about on the CCNA.

Someone out there should know what a 1600 series is capable of.

I hope that a 1600 series router will work for most labs for the CCNA. I saw on EBAY, they are a lot cheaper to buy than a 2500

Webmaster

You won't be able to do exactly 'everything' you need to learn for the CCNA exam unless you get two 2600's and a 2950 switch or higher, but those are too expensive for the average CCNA student. You can do most things on a combination of two 2500 routers and a 19xx enterprise switch, which are fairly cheap, hence popular for a low-budget cisco lab.

Apart from the IOS version (should be 12+) and the memory (16MB DRAM/16MB FLASH is good, 8/8 will often do just fine), the most important aspect are the interfaces. I.e. a 2501 is ideal because of the two Serial interfaces and the ethernet (AUI) interface, which allows you to setup a simple network with two lans and a WAN (serial back-to-back connection).

The 1601 is useful as it has one serial and one ethernet interface. The 1603 however is a ISDN access router, which is not of much use without an ISDN connection.

ja5983

I ended up going with (2) 2501s with 16/16 and IOS12, (1) 1912 enterprise, and (1) MC3810 w/VOIP.

I dont really know much about the 3810 except that its supposed to be a really nice router. A CCIE that lives in my town gave it to me..what exactly can it do that the 2500s cant besides voip?