About 3 years ago while doing a CCNA study project I put together
a _real_ Cisco lab. I ran it for about a year then when I moved, took
it all down. It's all now in an airconditioned 5x5 storage room at Metro
Self Storage uptown near Dale Mabry.
There are 6 or 7 2500-series routers with IOS from 11.0 to 12.3 _enterprise_
(JS-L image, 16 megs, lets you do _everything_, there are 2 of them). One of
them is the 2511 with the 8-cable fanout that lets you do real reverse telnet.
I got them from a remote rack hosting outfit, on eBay.
Each router has rack ears attached. Each serial port has a DB-60 to a V.35
interface cable. There are a number of paired CSU/DSU units, one pair is a
couple of Adtran, another pair is a couple of AstroComm NX-1 units. These are
really cool as you can enable any number of DS-0's (from the NX-1 front panel) and
see the effect on the IGRP routing metrics. Each CSU/DSU pair has a cat5 crossover cable
I made, proven to work (work as a T-1). Two of the routers have TR interfaces
and also provided are the hermaphrodite cables, a pair of 8228 MSAU and a couple of
win98 machines with Madge 4/16 TR cards installed. Or you can skip the TR part of it...
but you could claim hands-on with TR !! The CSU/DSU include instruction books.
There is a 1924 managed switch, 24 ports, you can connect to the admin port.
The router ethernet ports are mostly AUI but I include at least 7 or 8 adapters (both cisco and
allied telesyn) to allow Cat-5 connections. Note that everything ethernet is 10 Mbit except
for the 2 100Mbit admin ports on the 1924 switch.
There is also a 4000 series router with (I think) IOS 12.2 which works as a Frame
Relay emulator, there are three serial cards included.
There is an 84-inch open frame relay rack which I bought new from Graybar
which will hold most all of this material, and power strips that attach
to the rack sides. Everything has a power cord included. This when assembled
is basically a turnkey setup. There are also a bunch of the 8-conductor
console cords that let you use a machine with a DB-9 serial port for
console login.
You also would get a bunch of Cisco books, from Cisco press and others.
And a lot of paperwork with the login passwords and intf. information,
and suggested network layouts I used.
If anyone wants to talk to me about this, (1) I can deliver in my pickup
anywhere from Pinellas to the Orlando area. Probably 2 trips. (2) the entire
lot goes, so I can close the storage bin. No pick and choose. (3) I don't
have time for handholding with configuration. But everything worked the last
time I used it. There are some hubs to let you look at the ethernet network
traffic, look at the CDP layer-2 frames etc. with a sniffer (very helpful).
I'd be looking for upper $ 3 figures, or OBO. Just to get it all closed out.
These are all very nice clean units. It's enough to make it a collaborative
unit, i.e. a shared deal. Or a buyer could subdivide it. A serious buyer
could meet me at the selfstorage and look at it all.
I had it running with several linux PC's, for traffic generation. I had it set
up running pings and see the interface lights flash, (or real traffic as well)
just to prove out the routing. But you would need to supply your own end-point
machines to generate traffic, 2 would be enough, but you could run several endpoints
at once. I used this lab when I wrote my Practical for my Sans GSEC a few years ago.
A few months with this and you will reallllly "know Cisco" ... and SEE it work ...
at a reallllly good price. Thanks for reading.
Bob Foxworth rfoxwor1@tampabay.rr.com
---- Chuck Hast <wchast@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 18:53, Logan Tygart
> <thelogan@allyourbase-arebelongto.us> wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 05:59:09PM -0500, Chuck Hast wrote:
> > <snip>
> >> What would be a good router to get and practice on? I have a real
> >> network to put one on, and I am a hands on sort I need to actually
> >> use the commands and see it all work. I see all kinds of routers on
> >> e-bay, so wonder what would be a good one to obtain and use to
> >> learn all of the command set in order to help with the CCNA?
> >
> > I'd recommend an old 1720.
> >
> Woohooo, I found one of those for USD 15. Says used of course, they
> ranged from that price to USD 560. Most were around the 30-100 region.
> Looks like a good option.
>
> I will listen for other recommendations too.
>
> Now I need to find a administered switch that I can play with and learn
> that piece too. (the Cisco way)
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