I'm spending a lot of spare time working towards extra Cisco certification, in particular the CCIE routing and switching. No matter what exams i take, i always seem to find something enjoyable about seeing networks converge and routers relearning different routes around a network after a failure.
So i've invested in some more kit (off ebay) for my home lab to give me some more flexibility for different Cisco certifications.
My 1/2 rack now looks like this:
The kit list is as follows (top to bottom)
Cisco 1603 router (spare, as no power supply)
GTA Gnatbox 1000 firewall (Uses RIP v1 and V2 for dynamic routing. Can be a BB router for labs or, when i purchase an access server - segmentation for potentially renting this out for other Cisco students)
Cisco 1601 router (used as BB router for BGP/ospf/eigrp etc)
Cisco 861 router (used as BB router for RIP - access to home LAN via NAT)
Cisco 3524 switch
Cisco 2950 switch
Cisco 1841 router (R4 in lab 1x WIC 1T, 2xFE)
Cisco 2621 router (R5 in lab 2x WIC 1T, 2xFE)
Cisco 2621 router (R7 in lab 1x WIC 1T, 1x ISDN WIC, 2xFE)
Cisco 3640 router (Frame Relay Switch. 1x 4 port asyn serial , 1x 4 port sync serial, 1x 10base-t for management)
Cisco 2801 router (R6 in lab 1x WIC 1T, 2xFE)
Cisco 2501 router (R8 in lab 2x serial, 1x ethernet)
Cisco 2611 router (R3 in lab 1x WIC 1T, 1xFE)
Cisco 2501 router (R2 in lab 2x serial, 1x ethernet)
Cisco 1760 router (R1 in lab 1x WIC 1T, 1x vwic 1mft-g703)
Cisco 3550 switch (SW1 in lab with EMI IOS)
Other than the addition of another 3550, i'm really happy with this setup. The frame relay switch is connected to every Rx router in the rack, which prevents me from re-cabling, all i have to do is change the DLCI which the router is using, giving me endless possibilities for a topology. Every router is connected to their correspending switch port on SW1 (R1 - FE0/1, R2 - FE0/2 etc) and if they have multiple ethernet interfaces, the 2nd interface goes to SW2 with SW1 and SW2 being ether channeled together.
Also i run an old desktop PC with VMware ESXi free edition into one of the switches using a trunk port which allows me to put pc clients on different networks and look at the network traffic passing through any topology which i create on here.
For anyone that wants it. Here is the config of the ports on the frame relay switch.
!
interface Serial0/2
no ip address
encapsulation frame-relay
clockrate 128000
frame-relay intf-type dce
frame-relay route 201 interface Serial0/1 102
frame-relay route 203 interface Serial0/3 302
frame-relay route 204 interface Serial1/0 402
frame-relay route 205 interface Serial1/1 502
frame-relay route 206 interface Serial1/2 602
frame-relay route 207 interface Serial1/3 702
no shutdown
!
interface Serial0/3
no ip address
encapsulation frame-relay
clockrate 128000
frame-relay intf-type dce
frame-relay route 302 interface Serial0/2 203
frame-relay route 301 interface Serial0/1 103
frame-relay route 304 interface Serial1/0 403
frame-relay route 305 interface Serial1/1 503
frame-relay route 306 interface Serial1/2 603
frame-relay route 307 interface Serial1/3 703
no shutdown
!
interface Serial1/0
no ip address
encapsulation frame-relay
clockrate 128000
frame-relay intf-type dce
frame-relay route 402 interface Serial0/2 204
frame-relay route 403 interface Serial0/3 304
frame-relay route 401 interface Serial0/1 104
frame-relay route 405 interface Serial1/1 504
frame-relay route 406 interface Serial1/2 604
frame-relay route 407 interface Serial1/3 704
no shutdown
!
interface Serial1/1
no ip address
encapsulation frame-relay
clockrate 128000
frame-relay intf-type dce
frame-relay route 502 interface Serial0/2 205
frame-relay route 503 interface Serial0/3 305
frame-relay route 504 interface Serial1/0 405
frame-relay route 501 interface Serial0/1 105
frame-relay route 506 interface Serial1/2 605
frame-relay route 507 interface Serial1/3 705
no shutdown
!
interface Serial1/2
no ip address
encapsulation frame-relay
clockrate 128000
frame-relay intf-type dce
frame-relay route 602 interface Serial0/2 206
frame-relay route 603 interface Serial0/3 306
frame-relay route 604 interface Serial1/0 406
frame-relay route 605 interface Serial1/1 506
frame-relay route 601 interface Serial0/1 106
frame-relay route 607 interface Serial1/3 706
no shutdown
!
interface Serial1/3
no ip address
encapsulation frame-relay
clockrate 128000
frame-relay intf-type dce
frame-relay route 702 interface Serial0/2 207
frame-relay route 703 interface Serial0/3 307
frame-relay route 704 interface Serial1/0 407
frame-relay route 705 interface Serial1/1 507
frame-relay route 706 interface Serial1/2 607
frame-relay route 701 interface Serial0/1 107
no shutdown
!
