urgent looking to start ccnp home lab

hi all.

im looking to get my hands dirty with cisco equipment (you can only blag it for so long with theory didnt you know). i was wondering about recommended setups for a ccnp lab. As of March 2005 are 2500 series still ok for ccnp or is it now really 2600. How many routers,switches do you recommend for a lab. Any routers to avoid. Tell us what labs you use. my budget is about £600 or $1000 to you guys across the pond. All info would be grateful. fire away.

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Comments

Ten9t6

here is another quick question before you start getting replies...Do you plan on using this equipment in other Cisco certs....CCVP, CCSP....CCIE..and so on..This would make a difference on what I would start with.

wasims

Well, just for the CCNP 3-4 2600 series routers will do to cover your BSCI/BCRAN/CIT and for BCMSN 1 2900 series catalist swtich is enough this will cover your BCRAN/CIT as well.

philstar

yeah cheers for the replies. Im really just looking for ccnp (ccie scares the bejeezus out of me) and i can always sell and rebuy if i decide ccie in the future. as for those other cisco certs ccdp nah... im doing ccnp and checkpoint ccse. so 4 2610s and 1 2950 switch...sounds good

philstar

someone said you need two switches. this true??

wildfire

Two switches is handy, but you can get away with just one to be honest (I did) as for lab equipement even if you do plan to go for CCIE later on you can simply never have enough, 2500's will do most things especially if the are running enterpise with IP plus should have no problems.

tunerX

When looking for a 2950 you should try to get one with the enhanced image. The 2950 is the basis for doing QOS/auto qos. It is also the main switch in the BCMSN course. The 3550 would be a better choice, but that would be overkill unless you are going for the CCIE.

2500s are getting old and it shows for the different security, remote access, and QOS tasks that you should study.

You cannot do class based marking directly in a policy-map. You have to police and mark the the packets with the exceed action. Also, NBAR is unhappy when you run it

The 2500 also does not allow you to configure SSH. Also, some of the advanced IPSec/remote access options are not available (even with the latest IOS).

You should at least try to get one 2620 or a 3620. One FE port will suffice but two is better. The 2600 series is cheaper but the lower end models are starting to show their age as well. The latest full feature 12.2T IOS does not run on anything but the XM and higher end non-XM routers. If you have a CCO login and can download any IOS then it will only be a matter of getting different IOSs' for the different lab tasks.

You can pick up BRI and PRI/T1 wics pretty cheap on Ebay. WIC-2A/S are also good for doing multilink, LFI, and different remote access tasks.

I sold all of my 2500 series because they simply cannot perform for the CCVP, CCIP, and CCIE study labs.

wildfire

I know what your saying about the 2500's, however I managed to complete BSCI with 2500s (+ 2612 and 3620) and they did about 98% of the exam topics plus more than prepared me for the exam. So the point I was trying to make is that 2500s will do on a limited budget

Yozh

HEllo here is my 2 cents.

I used a cisco lab with 8 2500 and 1 1720 2 1900 - 1912 1924.

2500 will do everthing you need for the BCSI, as for BCSMN thats a hard one, you wont be able to do intervlan routing with out the FA intrface and even with that it should be able to support ISL encapsualtion atleast, (1720 dont do that) As far as switches go most of the stuff on the BCSMN is based to 35xx switches and higher 2900`s are good and might just do the job, but you will find that for basic stuff like etherchannel and VTP, vlan and prunning you can do on a 1900`s swtiches with latest image. If you can afford 2950 thats buy it. I can tell you the more routers you have the better you practise would be and practising diffrent env is also good. I bought 1 2521 just as a frame switch and it let me practise ospf, eigrp and bgp over frame relay. Good luck on your certs.

wildfire

support ISL encapsualtion atleast, (1720 dont do that)

Increase in Flash and DRAM and an IOS upgrade to JS (Enterprise plus) and it will do ISL encap.

Yozh

Actually no, you cant do intervlan routing on a 1720 and there is no ent (J) IOS image for the 1720. PLease do some research. It just dosnt support it .
Just to satisfy your answer mem/flash is at the max.

wildfire

well my own is 1720 is runnint c1700-Jko3s-mz-123-14T.bin!

Drakonblayde

Now that's interesting, because he's right, there isn't supposed to be ISL support for the 1720's, supposed to have to use a 1721. dot1q is supposed to be part of the base IP set for 12.3, but not ISL. I assume you're able to boot the router with that image, but have you actually tried setting up ISL to see if it works?

Yozh

Well there is no encapsulation command on the 1720 and you cant make the sub interfaces needed for "router on-a-stick". Yes you are absolutly correct the 1721 does it., and I belive it does it with ISL and dot1q, but I could be mistaking.

Drakonblayde

A 1721 with the proper IOS set will do ISL or dot1q, but a 1720 is only supposed to be able to do dot1q (probably why you don't get any encapsulation commands). I'll have to see if it will actually do dot1q when I get around to my BCMSN hehe

Drakonblayde

Nope, Yozh is right, the 1720 (or 1750 for that matter) does not support intervlan routing due to a limitation in the 860T processor.

tunerX

Why would you want to do ISL anyway? It only works with cisco equipment and can add a substantial amount of overhead.

Yozh

Well, its not the point of doing ISL, its really the point of which equpment to buy for a lab, and if you want to practise intervlan routing, ISL would do the trick, with some limitations ofcourse. Drakonblayde I had to learn the hard way. Research, and more research people........................

But I cant say Im not happy with the 1720, it can do VPN and not just site to site but client-server VPN which is good. You need full ram and flash for that. THe only thing that I really didnt like was no IS-IS support, you cant find an image that has it. Usually IS-IS available in J (ent) images, but there is no J images for 1720

or any 1700`s I belive, but it does good encruption and its pretty fast. 1700`s for mostly designed for SOHO/ROBO. Thats why all the limitations.

Drakonblayde

There are enterprise images for the 1721 and the 1751.

Yeah, lack of ISIS in the base set kinda pisses me off. You'd think BGP would be in the enterprise set too. ISIS is one thing I'm kinda screwed on for my BSCI... none of our test routers have Enterprise installed, and we can't legally upgrade them, so I'm going to have to rely on sims and pure memorization for isis. Ugh.

Yozh

Yeah jsut looked you right 1721 does have ent. There wont be too much on the test about ISIS exept the basic comcepts. Im sure youll be ok.