From: sheherezada@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 22 2007 - 17:42:52 ART
Fortunately enough, most of the time I had a full lab to practice on.
However, there were long periods of time when a lab was not available
to me, so I can tell you the difference, because I have tried the two
alternatives that you have mentioned.
1) An incomplete lab may help you to understand some technologies but
the real fun and trouble comes from the complexity of the full
scenarios, which you can hardly adapt on fewer equipment.
2) If you go for rack rental, this is OK as long as you are not
constrained by the time slot being too small or by some other tasks at
work that compete with your scheduled time slot.
Two very bad things might happen in this case:
- you rush through the lab, because you have a limited time slot. You
don't have time to play and try this and that - or even worse, you
look at the solutions to speed up, fooling yourself that you
understood the solutions
- you forfeit the time slot, because something more demanding appeared
at work or in your family. You cannot reschedule easily on short
notice, either.
Bottom line, if you go for rack rental, try to get exclusive time and
don't look at the money. It is very important to play with the lab at
your own pace. If you can not afford the money, take good care not to
fool yourself.
OK, I have not tried Dynamips combined with real switches, but this
sounds to me as a good alternative. Or if you want to try a
particular scenario on real equipment, just to see if there is any
difference, you can always go back to rack rental. Anyway, having
your incomplete and outdated home lab does not seem to me like too
much help.
HTH,
Mihai Dumitru
CCIE #16616 (SP, R&S)
On 8/22/07, Marc La Porte <marc.a.laporte@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am looking for some advice please.
>
> I have a home lab with 2x3550, 1x2811, a couple of 26xx's and a 4700 as
> frswitch. I am thinking about selling the whole thing as I am currently not
> using it that much, it doesn't have all the memory to run higher IOS's
> (except for the 2811 I can only run 12.1 or so) and it takes up a lot of
> space.
>
> Alternatively I am thinking about doing rackrentals when I need to study.
> The money I make on the sell will provide me with a lot of rack rental time,
> plus equipment is always hooked and up-to-date. Another thing is that I can
> still get a good deal on the 3550's while they are still in the lab. Once
> Cisco announces they're gone, I will lose a lot of money if I am able to
> sell them.
>
> What do you think?
>
> PS: I am working on my R&S lab using only the Interwork Expert e2e program.
>
> Thanks,
> Marc
>
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