RE: CCIE Lab kit for Prep

Yes GNS3 is very good. I have my own lab but don't power it up at all when I
am concentrating on a specific router technology.

I ended up going with a rack full of 2600XMs that run 12.4T using the INE
topology.

4x 3550's for the switches the same as Travis.

Now I am thinking I probably should have just gone down the GNS path and
connected my switches to that.

My 2600's don't do MPLS so that will need to be done in GNS3.

3560's are just too damn expensive!!

Cheers,

-Aaron.

-----Original Message-----
From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
travis newshott
Sent: Thursday, 24 February 2011 10:10 PM
To: Bennet Eapen
Cc: Jeferson Guardia; Clark, Neil; Ccielab_at_groupstudy.com
Subject: Re: CCIE Lab kit for Prep

I use a combo of GNS3 for all of the routers, paired with 4 3550s to cover
the majority of the switching topics.

On the 3550s you do have some features that you are missing that you may see
on the lab that are supported on the 3560s. You lose PVLANs entirely, QoS
commands are different, I've also heard that IPv6 support is not the same
either.

For a budget minded student it's an effective combo. I plan on doing
several labs on a rack rental towards the end to fine tune the commands for
the 3560s, as well as mock labs. When doing the labs I also look up the
commands to use on the 3560s so that way I can eventually write the configs
in notepad for the 3560s as some practice without the real deal.

Hope that helps...

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 7:57 AM, Bennet Eapen <bennet.eapen_at_gmail.com>wrote:

> As Jeferson mentioned you could use GNS3 to study bout 80% of the topics
> mentioned in the blueprint. Or to be more precise you could study
> everything
> under the routing topics. Since GNS3 cannot emulate a switch you'll have
to
> look at other options. There are a couple of sites that provide free
online
> labs. For eg. http://packetlife.net <http://packetlife.net/lab/> or
> www.firewall.cx <http://www.firewall.cx/cisco-lab-introduction.php>
>
>
> Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Subscription information may be found at:
> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html

Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
Received on Fri Feb 25 2011 - 08:46:59 ART