With the new version of the CCIE Wireless lab coming in September, many people will be looking to start preparing for their lab attempts. But one look at the hardware list for the exam shows that fully replicating the lab will be out of reach for just about everyone, unless your work already has a spectacular lab. But as with most every track, you can typically practice most things on a home lab without breaking the bank if you look at alternative options.
Before I list out my recommendations for a home lab, know that it will have some significant limitations. It’s not something that you could become fully lab ready on. Also, you will have a hard time following along with the workbooks that I’ll be putting out due to the restricted number of devices and the restricted feature sets available to them. But for self-directed study, this will allow you to practice a large portion of the v3 blueprint.
Recommended Hardware
These recommendations assume that you are starting a lab from scratch and don’t have existing equipment to pull from. If you have better stuff than what I recommend, use them.
WLCs
You will probably want to use a mixture of physical and virtual controllers in your lab. I’d get a single 2504 WLC and then use the virtual WLCs to get you to your desired number of WLCs. Honestly 1 vWLC is probably fine, but 2 would give you a smidge of extra flexibility. You wouldn’t want to go 100% virtual as the vWLC carries a number of restrictions that would prohibit practicing a decent chunk of the Unified blueprint.
2504 WLCs can be bought in the US off of eBay for about $500-$550 each.
APs
You honestly don’t need 802.11ac APs for practicing. It’s not worth the money to be able to practice a couple of extra commands. I’d recommend the 1142 series APs as they can do most everything (unified or autonomous). You’ll want 2 at a bare minimum. But 4 would be nice if you want to avoid constantly switching modes between lightweight and autonomous (use 2 of each mode).
1142 APs can be bought in the US off of eBay for about $50-$60 each.
Switches
I wouldn’t bother looking to buy a switch that supports converged access. The cheapest option that I have found is roughly $2,400 for a single switch. You could rent an insane amount of rack time for that. So if we can ignore the whole converged access thing, then we only need to worry about the switching feature set. Something that supports basic IPv6 routing will do the trick. I’d go with a 3560 that supports PoE. You’d want a pair of them, which should allow you to practice most everything. You could throw in a 3rd if you want a little more flexibility, but it’s not required.
WS-C3560-24PS switches can be bought in the US off of eBay for $100 or less each.
Servers
The good news here is that you should be able to use demo/evaluation licenses for PI, ISE, and the MSE. So you just need to supply an ESXi server to run them on. If you don’t have one lying around, you can probably find a used one on eBay for around $500 – $700. It may not be the fastest thing. But as long as you can run the VMs, that’s the important part. If the server didn’t have enough CPU/RAM to run all 3 at the same time, you could just run 1-2 at a time and still practice everything.
Terminal Servers
While this isn’t required, it makes life so much easier that it’s well worth the cost. If you don’t know what a term server is, it’s a device that has one connection to your network and then multiple connections that plug into the console ports of your WLCs, APs, and switches. This allows you to access all console ports simultaneously and removes the need for your PC to be physically plugged into the console ports. It not only increases your efficiency by a large amount, it frees you up to access your lab from anywhere that has IP connectivity to the term server.
The Cisco 2511 is the classic term server of choice for CCIE students around the world. I’d recommend the AS2511-RJ to avoid the need to use octal cables for the console connections. Just be sure to either order one that comes with an Ethernet AUI transceiver, or buy one separately.
AS2511-RJ term servers can be bought in the US off of ebay for $150 – $200 or less each.
Total Cost for a Decent Home Lab
So what does all of this add up to? Here is the break-down based off of US ebay pricing. You may find cheaper versions, but I wanted to use numbers that appear to be fairly easy to guarantee without much work. Where there is a range, I split the difference.
- 1- 2504 WLC= $525
- 4- 1142 APs= $55 * 4 = $220
- 2- 3560 Switches= $100 * 2 = $200
- 1- esxi server= $600
- 1- term server= $175
Total cost= $1720
So it isn’t necessarily cheap. But it is about as reasonable as you can get if you want to tackle the majority of the blueprint.
Is It Worth It?
That is a loaded and debatable question that could easily merit its own separate post. So I’ll leave that up to you to decide. Due to class schedules, we won’t have our v3 rack rentals available until late August/early September. So for now, a home lab is your only option for hands-on practice. If you decide to go that route, hopefully these recommendations will help you give you the best bang for your buck.
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