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hi all

Im at a cross roads at the moment and seek advise from you. Im undecided as to continue to purchase and build my lab at home or save my money and use the online labs available to me via IE rentals.

I worked it out that the avg cost for an IE rack rental is approx $13.2 for a 5.5hr session based on the website costs ($2.4perhour) which equates to £10per session.

Now then, my approx purchase for hardware,modules and cables is going to be £560. (I work for a cisco resellar so get alot of refurb kit cheap)

My hardware purchase is equal to 56 online rack sessions or 308 hrs (£560/£10)

So, what is the average time spent practicing workbooks vol1 and vol2, is 56 rack sessions enough or do you think I would need more? I know there is no definitive answer here but when i put into perspective like this it makes me think.

Thanks

One thing I like about having my own rack is that it's available when I need it for as long as I need it. 

Really the only downside of building your own home lab is the up-front investment costs.  Having your own lab to use whenever you want is awesome.  Don't have to worry about scheduling a rack, or working within any time constraints.  Also, you're more likely to use your lab if it's always available to you as compared to having to reserve one online.

Another thing to keep in mind about costs...  If you end up selling your equipment at the end, it becomes pretty cheap.  Say you take a 20% hit when you sell the equipment.  In that instance, it only ends up costing you 112 pounds.  That's only 11 rack rental sessions.

Really the only downside of building your own home lab is the up-front investment costs.  Having your own lab to use whenever you want is awesome.  Don't have to worry about scheduling a rack, or working within any time constraints.  Also, you're more likely to use your lab if it's always available to you as compared to having to reserve one online.

Another thing to keep in mind about costs...  If you end up selling your equipment at the end, it becomes pretty cheap.  Say you take a 20% hit when you sell the equipment.  In that instance, it only ends up costing you 112 pounds.  That's only 11 rack rental sessions.

Rack access is great for a planned time but what happens when you have an unplanned event happen?  Like for me if I get a work call and i'm 1 hour into a rack session what do i do then with the lost time I don't get my money back for that.  I invested in a full lab.

I can agree with you on the noise aspect.  That's why I connected my 2511 to my home wireless router.  That way I can access it from anywhere in my house and not have to listen the 17 fan symphony coming from my rack.  I'm not sure I can agree with you on the floor space issue though.  Geeks always find room for new toys

I agree with the problems with unplanned time. It is quite unfortunate if we were to lose time (and money! :-() for a scheduled rack session.

Noise is an issue ... that I agree. I can't imagine having my office's network equipments in my room. My wife would literally murder me for the noise.

However, it depends really on what you need/want. For me, I am using Dynamips for all the BB routers/R1-6 and Frame-Relay which the switches portion are handled by 4 real physical 8-ports 3560s (all connected via lots of cables and USB LAN adaptors). It is messy ... that I don't doubt it and it is quite a challenege to overcome some limitations (most vendor workbooks uses more than 8-9 ports on a switch due to etherchanneling, etc.) but it is doable. This is the cheapest lab so far I believe and if you really need to brush up on certain things that you can't do with a 'small' lab, then a few rental sessions is appropriate.

My take? Invest in a lab + a few sessions of online rack rental :-)

For sure using an online rack makes much more sense. The most imprtant thing about your own rack is the fact that you might have to waste tens of hours troubleshooting some stupid issues like dodgy cables, faulty power supplies or millions of other reasons which prevent you from getting started. I had the same issue; at 8PM after work, decided to get down to CCIE but one day my image was too old, another day TFTP server was infected by a virus, or a serial cable with a bent pin could waste all my night...

The worst part of the story occurs when you have to wait 10 days to get a memory module to spport an "ip sla"!!! exactly in the middle of a lab!

HTH,

It depends on a lot of things, but I was also doing my CCVP too, so if I were to buy routers, it would only be ones that have voice functionality with DSPs etc. Personally, I think there's so much you can do with GNS3/DynaMIPS that if you structure your study properly, you can minimize the time you need for racks etc.

When it comes to the layer 3 routing protocols, multicast, access lists etc....DynaMIPS is absolutely flawless.  So, what I did is I said that I would focus my learning on layer 3 routing protocols first.  For Bridging/Switching, I am currently using the 3640 etherswitch module supported by DynaMIPS.  You can learn qutie a bit of switching theory using that, considering the essence of SpanningTree/LAN Switching hasn't changed with the advent of the 3550s/3560s.....only features/functionality has improved but I'm at the point where I'm learning the fundamentals of LAN Switching theory, not the intricate aspects of the 3550/3560's special features.

DynaMIPS:

 I have come up with a hybrid strategy, but it depends on where you're at with your studies and your methods b/c I'm reading Routing TCP/IP along with doing Vol I labs of the routing protocols.

I have been using GNS3/DynaMIPS primarily for all of my learning so far. DynaMIPS also supports a 3640 switch module so you can learn the essence of spanning-tree with it, but you will be out of luck trying to do advanced 3560/3550 stuff.

So far, I am using DYnaMIPS to cover all of my Frame Relay, layer 3 routing stuff since it's virtually identical to a real lab.  Aside from layer 2 switching + QoS (which has some verification issues I hear), DynaMIPS does the job flawlessly.

Rack Rentals:

I plan to utilize rack rentals when I need to do my bridging/switching workbook Vol I and I need to know 3550/3560 specific functionality.  I am trying to get through the relevant parts of Cisco LAN Switching by Kennedy Clark and learning that is pretty much router independent.  I can do that using GNS3's support for the 3640 16/32 port switchport module IE uses for their Vol II workbook.

I really only contemplated buying equipment for the sake of switches, but if you buy switches you'll also need routers too, so I have decided to use racktime whenever I'm doing full-fledged labs that require 3550s/3560s.