Building Your Own Cisco CCIE Lab - Which Router?
Anyone who has already attained their Cisco CCIE certification will tell you how important it is to have your own lab. The good news is that if you are currently looking to build your own Cisco CCIE lab getting the right equipment for it has become much easier. Also the costs of this equipment has come down considerably as well.
When trying to decide what is the best equipment to build your CCIE lab with a great place to look for and compare prices is by searching auction sites such as eBay. Where as previously you would have to assemble the lab one piece at a time by buying from sites like eBay you can purchase everything at once and at much lower prices. There are even some vendors who sell readymade labs but be wary and check the sellers out thoroughly before you do make that all important purchase.
One of the main components that you need to build your own lab will be a router. But because there are so many different ones to select from it is important that you spend time looking at each one and comparing them carefully. Also if you want to save yourself money when buying a router it is far better to buy a dual rather than single one. Below we look at a number of different Cisco routers to consider purchasing as part of your Cisco CCIE lab. Cisco 2501 – This is the least expensive of all the routers available and costs around $94.00 and has 16MB Flash/16MB DRAM. Although the cheapest it will still be capable of supporting the majority of commands that you need to learn to be able pass the CCNA exam. But in order to convert these routers Ethernet AUI Port in to a RJ-45 Ethernet port one needs to add a transreceiver. Cisco 2503 – This one is similar to the one mentioned above but costs considerably more ($119.00). However unlike the 2501 this comes with an ISDN port so you will be able to learn how to configure ISDN commands. Plus just like the 2501 one needs to fit it with a transreceiver so that the Ethernet AUI port can be converted into an RJ-45 Ethernet port. Cisco 2505 or 2507 – These two routers are similar to the ones we have previously mentioned but the major advantage that these have over the 2501 is that it comes with a built in 8 or 16 port hub. So no transreceiver is required. But the one thing that all these routers have in common is that they have a minimum of two serial ports and also an Ethernet port. Cisco 2612 – This is the most expensive of all the routers that one can purchase for building your own Cisco CCIE lab. The average cost of one of these routers is around $199 and has an 8MB Flash and 32MB DRAM. This is not a modular router as the ones that we previously discussed and so to improve its functionality you have the opportunity to add more modules to it such as additional serial ports, ISDN ports and Ethernet ports if you wish. Although the initial cost of this particular router for your Cisco CCIE lab is high it will save you money in the long run. Simply put you don’t need to actually go out and buy separate routers for every discipline that you want to learn as part of your Cisco certification training.
Cisco Certification >> Privacy Policy
| 
