Just ordered my IPExpert BLS Voice. Sofar, everything I’ve seen and heard has been promising. I’m a little concerned on the flexibility of the training due to the copyright security in place. What I’ve heard sofar, it seems that you must be online to open any of the training which could be a little troublesome when sitting in a airport without wifi. I’ll know more in a few days when it arrives and continue commenting on the experience.
Many of late are using GNS3 to simulate their lab. But many others are still using hardware the ole fashion’d way. A big part of getting a good lab setup is simulating the infrastructure. In most of the IE tracks, having a frame-relay network in place for simulating the connections between sites is a must. QOS, FRTS, etc. To do this you will need to have hardware in place to provide this infrastructure.
There are many options here. The easiest way to start is with a router that has several serial interfaces. I suggest a 2522 router as you can pick those up cheap. It has 8 serial ports. Otherwise, a nm capable router (26xx/36xx/etc) with a nm-4a/s or nm-4t is also a good start. (Need larger use a nm-8a/s or nm-8t) The big difference between the “a/s” and “t” version is the speed at which they clock. The “a/s” is limited to 128k connections and the “t” is at 2mb. (more…)