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I found many candidates with the same question. When you plan to study for the CCIE R&S or any other track, you have to take some time out to study about configuring your routers and switches. Many candidates are seemed to be confused about the CCIE lab equipment. Questions like what routers or switches you should buy? Or how many routers or switches do you need? And much more question arises in their mind.
Well, no need to worry. Today I am going to answer all such kind of questions. I will give you the answers to all such questions and more. The first thing that you are needed to put your focus on is the Topology.
Topology
While studying for CCIE you really should know about using the workbooks from one of the vendors like INE or Narbik. You may use the CCIE R&S Lab blueprint and study some of the topics on your own but the workbooks provided by these guys have already done all the work for you by creating labs. Personally, I prefer to use the workbooks from INE when I was studying for CCIE R&S along with the study dumps provided by the SPOTO CCIE Club.
Both of them use a lab topology for all of their labs. Most of their topologies have around 4 switches and 9 routers. 3 of the routers are considered to be the backbone routers, pretty much the same as what you were expecting on the CCIE R&S lab exam. The backbone routers are to be pre-configured and out of your control. They are used to inject routing information and to do some other neat tricks.
The number of routers & switches and also the interfaces, cables, router/switch models and IOS versions are going to depend on what topology you are going to use.
Real Equipment:
Talking about the real equipment I mean to say the physical hardware, the stuff which you have to buy on eBay or any other site. Sounds great, isn’t it? If you would be having your own lab, you can access it when and wherever you want. Though it may sound a great idea, I am not going to recommend it. I have built my own lab but only because I wanted to keep it even after I clear the lab exam. I’m still using it when I am creating tutorials for any website. I know you would be hearing a lot to build your own lab, but let’s first consider some disadvantage about it:
• Building your own lab is quite expensive, though you can sell most of the hardware when you have cleared your certification. It’s pretty hard to tell that how much money you are going to get from selling your old hardware about 12 months from now. There is a possibility that you might not get much in return.
• When you are having a budget problem you may be forced to replace some routers or switches with the cheaper models. If you do so, the problem is that some features are not supported on the cheaper switches. As for example, instead of the 3560 switches, you may get a 3550 but it is not going to support all IPv6 features or private VLANs. It will take time for you to find out what your lab can’t do.
These are just a few disadvantages which are a major one. So before you buy any hardware, double-check that it is usable for version 5 of the CCIE R&S lab exam. As now Cisco doesn’t use a particular switch model and the entire lab is made virtual.
Conclusion
If you really want to gain 100% Pass CCIE Lab Materials, I am going to recommend that you gain the rack rentals as it is the most efficient way. One more option is that you could join certain training providers such as the CISSPTOP, and gain the training from their trainers as well as their equipment. Hopefully, I was able to clear your doubts.
