Build your own Cisco Lab? How far you would go?

by David Sudjiman ~ February 11th, 2006. Filed under: News.

I know some people would buy Cisco routers to build a lab. However, Scott Morris has gone this far. Cisco, Juniper, Netscreen, Sun, you name it.

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1 Response to Build your own Cisco Lab? How far you would go?

  1. Darby Weaver
    July 9th, 2006 at 12:19 am

    I have gone very very far…

    I own well over 100 devices and have either complete or almost complete labs for the CCIE RS SP Voice and Security.

    I also have a WLAN Lab - Complete as well.

    I have Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD/OpenBSD, Linux (variant), SGI, Labs as well.

    I have a Cisco Works Lab of Cat 5000’s for the Ciscoworks Courseware and a few other “complete labs for 12 router (each) BGP and OSPF Labs.

    I have an Netscouts for the nGenius product and a small fleet (about 20) of Dsitrbuted Sniffers and an Infinistream to top it off.

    I have spent easily in excess of $150,000.00 to date and since I buy from ebay figure the retail value would be 10x - 20x that number.

    So I’d say this is fairly extreme.

    I also own my own tech library eastimated at between $40,000 and $50,000.00 retail cover price.

    I have spent over $10,000 on CCIE RS Security and Voice Labs and other materials leading up to these qualifications.

    I am a MS Partner and MCT so I pay my fees per year to keep these credential and the benefits they provide me in terms of software and access to training materials and templates.

    I have attended over $75,000.00 in employer-paid or self-paid training to date in a variety of realms:

    MS, Cisco, Secrurity, Voice, Protcol Analysis, WLAN, and other technologies.

    So I’m pretty much a techno-junkie and naturally I do not sleep.

    I eat Enterpise Network issues for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

    If I had to stop today, I would die from boredom.

    I have about two 12×13 rooms wall-to-wall equipment.

    I do not have a DS3 to the house yet. However, I am considering Business Class Roadrunner and “Wireless Anywhere” Internet Connectivity - The company pays for it so I might as well.

    They like me to be available 24/7/365

    I do have other vendors equipment in my lab as well Nortel, Cabletron, CheckPoint, Sun, SGI, Packeteer, and the list goes on and on…

    Yep - A junkie.

    No it is not all powered up all the time.

    I use what I need when I need it.

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