More CCNA and CCNP candidates than ever before are putting together their own home labs, and there's no better way to learn about Cisco technologies than working with the real thing. Getting the routers and switches is just part of putting together a great CCNA / CCNP home lab, though. You've got to get the right cables to connect the devices, and this is an important part of your education as well. After all, without the right cables, client networks are going to have a hard time working!
For your Cisco home lab, one important cable is the DTE/DCE cable. These cables have two major uses in a home lab. To practice directly connecting Cisco routers via Serial interfaces (an important CCNA skill), you'll need to connect them with a DTE/DCE cable. Second, if you plan on having a Cisco router act as a frame relay switch in your lab, you'll need multiple DTE/DCE cables to do so. (Visit my website's Home Lab Help section for a sample Frame Relay switch configuration.)
If you have multiple switches in your lab, that's great, because you'll be able to get a lot of spanning tree protocol (STP) work in as well as creating Etherchannels. To connect your switches, you'll need crossover cables.
You'll need some straight-through cables as well to connect your routers to the switches.
Finally, if you're lucky enough to have an access server as part of your lab, you'll need an octal cable to connect your AS to the other routers and switches in your lab. The octal cable has one large connector on one end and eight numbered RJ-45 connectors on the other end. The large connector should be attached to the async port on your AS, and the numbered RJ-45 connectors will be connected to the console ports on your other routers and switches.
Choosing and connecting the right cables for your Cisco CCNA / CCNP home lab is a great learning experience, and it's also an important part of your Cisco education. After all, all great networks and home labs all begin at Layer One of the OSI model!
As a CCNA or CCNP, one thing you've got to get used to is that change is constant. Cisco regularly issues new IOS versions, not to mention the many different kinds of hardware they produce! While it's always nice to have "the latest and the greatest" when it comes to routers, switches, firewalls, etc., we have to be prepared for the fact that not all our clients are going to have that latest and greatest!
For instance, there are still quite a few Catalyst 5000 switches out there humming away, and if you're used to working on IOS-driven switches like the 2950, the same command can have dramatically different results.
Let's say you're going to examine the spanning tree protocol (STP) setup of a new client. You're used to working with newer 2950 switches, and you've always run show span on those switches to display spanning-tree information. Then, you run show span on a Catalyst 5000 - and something like this shows:
switch (enable) show span
Destination : Port 6/1
Admin Source : Port 6/2
Oper Source : Port 6/2
Direction : transmit/receive
Incoming Packets: disabled
Learning : enabled
Multicast : enabled
Filter : -
Status : active
Total local span sessions: 1
What's going on here?
The command show span on a 5000 will not show spanning tree stats - instead, what you're going to see are statistics relating to Switched Port ANalyzer (SPAN). Surprise!
Consider an example where you're used to running show span on 5000 switches to see SPAN information. When you run that on a 2950, you know now what you're going to get - spanning tree information! To get SPAN stats on a 2950, you'll need to run show monitor session, followed by the SPAN session number.
SW1#show monitor session 1
Session 1
---------
Type : Local Session
Source Ports :
Both : Fa0/1
Destination Ports : Fa0/2
Encapsulation : Native
Ingress: Disabled
As a CCNA and CCNP, this is one of those things you just have to get used to. Commands are going to be different, sometimes radically so, between models. That's why you need to be adept with both IOS Help and Cisco's online documentation site. IOS Help is easy, but the online doc site take a little getting used to. Once you learn how to navigate that site, a world of Cisco knowledge is at your fingertips.
Besides, when you sit for the CCIE lab exam, that will be the only friend you have! And a valuable friend it can be - you're just going to have to trust me on that one. :)
Chris Bryant has sinced written about articles on various topics from CISCO CCNA, Personal Desktop and Cisco CCNP. Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage , home of free and CCNP tutorials! Pass the. Chris Bryant's top article generates over 27100 views. to your Favourites.