Many people like to build out a personal lab for CCIE studies. Nothing beats a fully functional lab at your fingertips 24/7 in terms of convenience. The tough part about building a home lab for the wireless lab is the very high cost of being able to fully replicate the lab equipment. For instance, the controllers alone would cost over $15,000 on the used market for four 5508s. Fortunately, we can make some compromises on equipment and get close enough.
This post begins a six part series that talks about how to best build a home lab on a budget. At the end of the series, I’ll also talk about using rack rentals as either an alternative or supplement to a home lab including cost comparisons and a lengthy pros/cons list.
In this first post I’ll focus on your options for switches and routers.
Switches
The wired networking portion of the wireless lab is definitely important. Everything wireless ultimately makes its way to the wired network. Most of the points earned in the lab rely on the wired network functioning correctly in one way or another. So you will want to be able to have all of those technologies down.
At a minimum, you will want three switches. At least two of them should be layer 3 switches. Three switches will allow you to do most anything layer 2 related. Two layer three switches will let you do most anything layer 3 related.
Another consideration would be Power over Ethernet (PoE). Since you will have some wireless APs, you’ll want to be able to power them. PoE is generally the preferred method. So having PoE capability on at least some of your switches is desirable.
In the actual lab, you will have 6500s, 3560s, and 2960s. The good news is that you don’t need any of those for a home lab. My recommendation is to use 3550s as your layer 3 switches and 2950s as your layer 2 switches.
3550s
The recommended model for 3350s would be the WS-C3550-24PWR-SMI. This would be a 24 port switch with pre-standard Cisco PoE. That should power most any AP with the exception of a 1252. It also has 2- 1Gb ports that could be used for connectivity to a 4400 or 5500 series WLC. They are GBIC style ports, so you would have to additionally buy a WS-G5483 in order to support a 1 Gb copper connection to a controller.
The SMI model is technically a layer 2 licensed switch. The EMI model is a layer 3 licensed switch. But a layer 3 image installs just fine onto an SMI switch. It’s not technically kosher to install the layer 3 image on a SMI model switch without paying an upgrade fee. But this is for home labs and not for production. If you have an issue with that, just look for an EMI model.
On ebay, you can generally find WS-C3550-24PWR-SMI switches for $100 without much trouble. That’s a significant savings over a similarly featured 3560, which would run over $300 each.
2950s
For a generic layer 2 switch, it’s hard to beat the 2950. It’s a bit limited in terms of functionality. But it works well enough for the wireless lab. You cannot do everything on it. But for spanning tree and VTP practice, it’s fine. You can also get a model that has two 1Gb Ethernet ports built in for easy 4400/5500 WLC connectivity.
My recommendation for the model to buy is the WS-C2950T-24. That is the model with the built in 1Gb Ethernet ports. You can generally find it on ebay for around $40. You won’t really find a cheaper method to get 1Gb connectivity for your WLCs.
One downfall of the 2950 in a wireless lab is the lack of PoE support. Be sure to keep that in mind.
Switch recap
If you want to practice most things, then $240 will get you where you need to be. If you are interested in replicating what we use in our racks, we use 4- 3560 series switches. So you’d want to buy 4- 3550s. You could swap out CAT3 with a 2950, but then you’d need a method to power a pair of APs.
When you are planning your cabling, you should plan on using cross-over cables for your switch-to-switch connections. I don’t believe that the 3550s and 2950s support auto-mdix.
Routers
Routers aren’t a necessary component of the home lab. But there are a few use cases for them that might make one a good buy. If you plan on having any phones and you want them to be able to make calls, routers can run Call Manager Express (CME). So instead of actually having a server running the call control services, your router can. Another feature that your router can do is NAT. Your switches probably won’t be able to do this for you (unless you buy an expensive one). So if you want to practice making AP joins work across a NAT, a router will allow you to do that. Lastly, you can use a router to provide VPN connectivity to your home lab. So if you want to use your home lab while at work or on the road, a router could help you accomplish that.
My recommendation for a router model to purchase would be a 2811 ISR. To run call manager services, Cisco recommends 256 MB of DRAM and 128 MB of flash. But if you want to add in the VPN functionality, you may want to double those numbers. These routers have a pair of 100 Mb Ethernet ports on them. That makes it easy to have the router connect your lab network to your home network. Similar to the 3550, you can install any IOS on a 2800 series router. That makes it ideal for a home lab.
You can find 2811s for around $200 on ebay. Pay attention to the amount of DRAM/flash included. If you are having trouble finding a router with enough flash in the $200 range, you can always purchase a 256 MB compact flash for $20-$30 for an easy upgrade. Try to stick with Cisco branded flash. I’ve had issues making other brands work in Cisco equipment.