Boson Netsim for CCNP -- Any Reviews?

Hey Everyone,

Just curious if anyone has used Boson's CCPN Netsim product? I know real equipment is always the way to go but if this could be a good compliment to that I'm definitely interested. Please let me know if anyone has used this.

Thanks.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

koz24

I got it primarily for the labs. There are 29 switch labs, 40 route labs, and 36 tshoot labs. I haven't used it to create any custom topologies but I will likely be using IOL for that anyway.

Danielh22185

The money you spend on Boson Net Sim you might as well get Viral and do real equipment emulations.

koz24

What is the advantage of VIRL over IOU/IOL then? Personally I don't mind spending extra cash to have the labs and their solutions all conveniently lined up for me. It saves me time from having to set the topologies up myself, plus I don't know of any other CCNP-level workbooks out there other than the official Cisco ones and Simplified.

I've also heard that VIRL now does L2 but L2 devices count against the 15 device cap. Is that true? If so you may still need to use IOU/IOL over VIRL for CCIE labs.

Danielh22185

koz24 wrote: »

What is the advantage of VIRL over IOU/IOL then? Personally I don't mind spending extra cash to have the labs and their solutions all conveniently lined up for me. It saves me time from having to set the topologies up myself, plus I don't know of any other CCNP-level workbooks out there other than the official Cisco ones and Simplified.

I've also heard that VIRL now does L2 but L2 devices count against the 15 device cap. Is that true? If so you may still need to use IOU/IOL over VIRL for CCIE labs.

I personally have not used VIRL yet but plan on getting it setup this weekend.

Mike-Mike

i have used Boson before, not for the CCNP, but I liked it. I will probably get it. I dont know much about VIRL

zachkenemer

I have VIRL, but I haven't used it that extensively. It will take a little time to get used to the UI like everything else. VIRL does use this auto config feature that will create all the configs by itself. I find this doesn't help in a lab environment but it can easily be turned off. It really needs to be polished, but I'm sure that will come with time. I never used any other sims besides a very old boson and packet tracer