CCNA Practical Studies Part 1: Build Your Own Home Lab

To really gain hands-on experience with Cisco routers and switches to prepare for the exam, it is recommended to get yourself some actual Cisco routers and switches. What models and how many pieces of equipment you get really depends on your budget. Software simulators are a great convenience but, by their nature, do not allow you to learn-by-practice Layer 1 (Physical layer) fundamentals. The available simulator alternatives will be covered in the second installment of this series.

Routers
One must at least have two routers to begin with. To apply configuration commands and to "see" their effect, for instance, in propagation of routes, population of routing tables, loops etc., reinforces theoretical material learned on the same. Examples of routers that could be used include the Cisco 2501 which has one ethernet port and two serial. This is a cost effective investment since these come cheap on eBay. The Cisco 2514 has two ethernet interfaces for more flexibility. To experiment with more complex configurations one can get more than two routers (especially for frame relay configurations which need at least three routers, one dedicated frame relay switch) and/or use the 2600 series routers which provide modularity. You may notice that the 2600 series has two designations - XM and, I guess, non-XM. The difference between the two is that XM supports LAN trunking and provides 100Mbps ethernet ports; non-XM versions do not, hence cost less.

Switches
Same applies for switches: for one to be able to experiment with and appreciate Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) configuration - in all its flavors - you need at least two switches. In contrast to routers, there are alot more switches out there. Most are layer two switches but there are also several layer three switches on which routing functions can be configured e.g. on the Catalyst 3550. Which would be appropriate for the CCNA? The Catalyst 1900, 2924, 2950 and 3548-XL would be good bets.

Miscellany
Remember to get cables! In general, for same-layer configurations get crossover cables, otherwise straight-through's are needed. Serial cables would also be used for router-router configurations. Also, if you get 2501's with AUI ports remember to get transceivers which convert the ports to ethernet.