So, we’ve discussed routers and tradeoffs in buyed used routers for a few weeks now. So… what do you do for switches? Well, at first glance, the task can be a bit daunting if oyu’re still pretty new to the Cisco world. I’ll give a few opinions today about what’s clutter, and what I think makes a lot of sense for CCNA prep in regards to your choices when buying switches.
First, if you go to the age old (but soon to be replaced by a less intuitive URL) doc site at www.cisco.com/univercd, and pick the switch pull down, you get a long list of switch models. In fact, for perspective, I’ve put a section of the list here in the blog – note that there are 10 different models listed that begin with “29”.
So, how to sift through it all? Well, first let me give a little background that may help us get to a reasonable choice or two.
On routers, if you run IOS on 5 different models of routers, the commands used to configure and examine a particular feature act the same, with the same syntax, with only minor exceptions to that rule. That makes studying router topics for the exams easier, and it makes writing exam questions easier, because the syntax and show command output should be the same across routers.
Most of Cisco’s switch product line runs IOS – not the exact same IOS that runs on routers, but an OS whose user interface acts like router IOS. There are slight differences in command syntax on some models of IOS switches, and in defaults for commands – and that poses a bit of a problem for exam preparation and for the people writing the exam questions. If they write a question whose answer might be different depending on the model of switch, then they’d have to tell us all that the exam is based on a particular model series of switches.
So, how does Cisco deal with those differences for the exams? They keep the switching questions sufficiently generic so to avoid the differences. The questions may still be challenging, but they avoid the differences – which means we can pretty much buy any Cisco switch that runs IOS and get some benefit for studying for the CCENT and CCNA exams.
That’s the good part. The bad part is that to get the most benefit from studying the switching stuff, you’d do best with the model used in the labs suggested by Cisco for their authorized ICND1 and ICDN2 courses – namely, 2960 switches. Those switches haven’t seen any real reduction of prices in the used market yet. In prior versions of the courses, Cisco specified the 2950 switch, which is very close to the 2960 switch terms of command syntax and output. So, I’ll treat 2950’s as the high-end of the range, and look at two popular cheaper alternatives – the 1900 series and the 2900XL series.
Here’s a quick look at the “buy it now” best prices when I looked on Ebay when writing this blog entry:
1900: $13
2924XL: $90
2950: $200
In closing, when I did this with the routers, I got a lot of good suggestions for other model series to look at, particularly for price ranges and functions. Next post, I’ll compare these 3, but if you have another you’d like me to consider putting in the mix, let me know!
