While we're talking about building a home lab, let's talk about the cheapest home lab ever...That'd be FREE. A group of guys from France have put together a Cisco emulator known as GNS3. Notice I said, "emulator" rather than "simulator". This is the real deal guys...put together a network diagram and boot a REAL IOS in a PC-based lab environment.
Best of all, it's an open-source project which means it's free! The download link for GNS3 is http://www.gns3.net/download . In addition, a great guy named Josh has a ton of video tutorials walking through the setup of GNS3 at BlindHog.net . Here's a direct link to "Building an Internet Lab with GNS3 ".
The only thing that GNS3 is missing is labs. It's great to build a topology of routers...but then what? Ah...but a solution is emerging. Stay tuned for more on this... :o)
NOTE: All credit for Cisco emulation is not due to the GNS3 group. It all started with Dynamips, whose project page is here .
Jeremy D. Cioara, CCIE No. 11727, is the owner of AdTEC Networks, an IT consulting firm. Jeremy also teaches on topics ranging from Cisco certification to IP telephony. Jeremy is also the author of books and official curriculums.
We've got 15 copies of his new book CCNA Practice Questions (Exam 640-802), 3rd Edition, up for grabs. Go here for details on how to win a copy. Go here for a sneak peek of a chapter.
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