Cisco Lab

The equipment I ordered to use in my CCNA studies arrived yesterday. As expected, the switches and routers show some wear but overall, they look to be in good shape. The 12U rack is new and went together without too much trouble. It came with a bag of 8x32 rack screws.

I mounted the three Catalyst 2950 switches at the bottom. Incidentally, the auction description said that they would be 24-port switches, but as you can see from the picture, I was shipped 48-port units. I suspect that's what the seller had handy.

Because of how Cisco designed the 1841 router case, I mounted them backwards in the rack so that I have easy access to the ports. I decided to leave 1U between them for routing the power cords. I still have room for a couple more devices such as a server or a 1U power strip.

ASSuming I get the CCNA, if I go on towards my CCNP I'll probably replace at least one of the 2950s with a Layer 3 switch that can route traffic between VLANs. That's a little while down the road, however.

I plan to fire up everything after work tomorrow.