From: scott_ccie_list@it-ag.com
Date: Fri Aug 17 2007 - 18:34:19 ART
Hi all,
I admit that this is a cross-post from the Professional board, but I didn't yet have myself subscribed to this list, so I hope you will overlook it just this once (my guess is that there are many here who never look there, so chances are probably a bit higher someone will have some thoughts to offer)...
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OK all, I know that many here use these workbooks, so I'm hoping for some insight. I had planned to use a large 8 x CPU server to run all router instances in Dynamips. I had then thought to buy two or perhaps four 3560-8 switches. However, when I look at the drawing on page 18 of:
http://www.internetworkexpert.com/downloads/iewb-rs.v4.00.sample.lab.pdf (1 MB file, BTW)
I see that, for example, SW2 has connections to four different distinct routers. I had planned to have one GBIC connection to the server per switch (four NICs on the server). Not sure, exactly, how to work this out without doing too much customization of each lab, which could be confusing and chew up a lot of valuable time. The one obvious thing I can think to do would be to create an emulated switch for each physical switch. Then all routers would terminate to emulated switches only, per the lab topology. I would then bridge the emulated switches to physical server NICs using the Windows loopback and run 802.1q trunks to with the physical switches.
For those of you who have experience with the IEWBs, do you think this feasible? Or too much trouble to keep straight, since it wouldn't map exactly to the lab topology.
And yes, I realize that those 8-port switches would not fully support what I'm seeing on page 18. My thought was that rather than three links between each switch, I'd drop it down to two in some or all places. Thoughts on the impact of that approach?
Thanks much...
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The bottom line is that I can't afford four 24-port 3550s or 3560s (self-employed, slow year). So I'm just trying to work out some form of lab prep that is not horribly expensive yet is still effective. That server sitting there doing nothing is just too great a temptation; I cannot justify bying a bunch of used or new routers with that resource available to me. Just need to work out the switching part and I'm not too keen on rack rentals. Seems like you need to book too far out and availability can be very spotty. I'm certainly open to the idea of mock labs, just don't want to rely on rentals for study, which I do at very odd hours at times...
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