Far more CCNA and CCNP candidates than ever before are placing together their own household labs, and you will find no greater way to understand about Cisco systems than working with the serious matter. Acquiring the routers and switches is just part of putting with each other a excellent CCNA / CCNP dwelling lab, even though. You have received to get the correct cables to connect the gadgets, and this is an essential element of your training as very well. Right after all, without the ideal cables, client networks are likely to have a difficult time performing!
For your Cisco home lab, just one important cable is the DTE/DCE cable. These cables have two major employs in a residence lab. To practice specifically connecting Cisco routers by using Serial interfaces (an important CCNA talent), you will have to have to link them with a DTE/DCE cable. Next, if you approach on having a Cisco router act as a frame relay switch in your lab, you’ll need to have many DTE/DCE cables to do so. (Stop by my website’s Residence Lab Assist section for a sample Frame Relay switch configuration.)
If you have several switches in your lab, that is great, due to the fact you will be equipped to get a good deal of spanning tree protocol (STP) function in as well as generating Etherchannels. To join your switches, you will need crossover cables.
You are going to will need some straight-via cables as properly to join your routers to the switches.
At last, if you’re fortunate sufficient to have an entry server as aspect of your lab, you are going to require an octal cable to connect your AS to the other routers and switches in your lab. The octal cable has just one huge connector on just one finish and 8 numbered RJ-45 connectors on the other stop. The substantial connector must be connected 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.
Selecting and connecting the right cables for your Cisco CCNA / CCNP dwelling lab is a terrific learning expertise, and it can be also an significant part of your Cisco education. Soon after all, all good networks and residence labs all commence at Layer One particular of the OSI product!