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Open Source Cisco Certification Study Aids?
phee asks: "I'm trying to get my CCNA. I have some Cisco hardware (a PIX, switches, T1), but no routers to play with. Router knowledge is a big part of the CCNA exam, so I've been looking for router simulators. All the ones I can find are very commercial and very Only-For-Windows(tm). Anyone know of any open source simulators that work in Xwindows or text mode even? There's just no substitute for hands-on experience... " If such simulators don't exist, how about online study-guides or Web pages that talk about such information?
Search dejanews.com for 'cisco lab' or similar, in news:comp.dcom.sys.cisco - this is a frequent question.
You can rent time on Internet-accessible router labs - not cheap, but may be OK in the short term. Alternatively, maybe you could club together with some other people learning about Cisco and buy a basic lab for use over the Internet by club members?
A few second hand 2500s between 10 people would not be too bad, as long as the hosting club member had always-on Internet access and a Linux box (from which to telnet into routers and run other tools). Comp.dcom.sys.cisco has quite a few of these for sale - just make sure they have enough RAM and flash to run interesting versions of IOS 12.0. You can cut the cost by buying low-RAM versions and buying commodity (or even Kingston) memory to upgrade them.