My Home Lab as of Now

Ever since I was in High School I was fascinated with computer networking. I moved on to college to persue my Associates in Applied Science concentrating in Network Administration. During my tenure at S.U.N.Y Ulster I trained in CISCO Networking, A+ Computer Repair, and basic Microsft System Administration. I found that the Hardware side of Network Administration fascinated me the most and it help persuade me to build my home lab.

My first revision of my home lab started out with a cisco 1605 router and a Cisco WSC1201 switch. It was a very basic setup. I was unable to do that much with that setup so I looked around in upgrading my home lab. I scoured ebay and other retailers online and I was able to buy a cisco 2924XL switch for dirt cheap. That switch was connected to my home network and I used it primarilly with my PFSENSE router/firewall.

Later I added a cisco 1711 router that I purchased online as well. I was able to do routing between the PFSENSE router and the 1711 router using RIP. In addition to the basic distance vector routing I was able to configure basic Spanning tree, Inter-VLAN routing between the 1711 and the 2924XL Switch. That was good enought to help me with my CCNA Studies for switching. As for the CCNA routing I had to look into GNS-3 to do the routing sections.

I was able to emulate many cisco routers and configurations using my personal computer. It was a good subsitute for the routing part of the exam. The only downfall is that you won’t get that much experience with wiring up the equipment and troubleshooting physical layer issue. That is when I decided to buy more pieces of equipment for my home lab.

I was able to buy 2 cisco 3550-48-emi switchs, 2 cisco 2950-24  switches, cisco 2621xm router and a cisco 1230ABG wireless access point. These pieces of equipment allow me to do most of the CCNP Switching Labs, Troubleshooting Labs and some of the Routing LABS. I am now coupling this setup with GNS-3 on my computer to train for my CCNP Certification. I am going to buy  more routers so that I can get some more hand on training with the equipment since I learn better using hands on approaches.

Recently I bought a Dell Poweredge 2950-G3 Rack mount Server in addition to my  IBM E325 server to use for Vitural machines and linux testing. I figure it would be nice to consolodate the network equipment down and use virtual machines for various network testing. So far everything has been connected in  42U relay rack with a switchable power strip for the switches and router. I plan on rewiring the network lab when I move into my new home where I will be setting up a new revison of my lab. I will post pictures as soon as I can.

I will be using this blog to showcase some of the Labs I will be designing, implementing, operating, optimising and documentating here in future blog posts.

I hope you all enjoy.

RTA