CCIE Lab Preparation Resources

How To Build A CCIE Rack
By: Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593

Overview

Our Platforms

Alternate Platforms

Cabling

IOS

What sets the CCIE certification so far apart from the numerous other certifications available in the IT industry? A grueling 8-hour practical lab exam that takes countless hours of book study, real world experience, and hands on configuration experience to pass, of course!

While many engineers have significant experience configuring and troubleshooting Cisco equipment in live production environments, the knowledge accumulated through this process is typically not enough on its own to pass the CCIE lab exam. So if this knowledge isn't enough, then what else is required? Simple… practice, practice, practice! (and don't forget to practice). So the next logical question is… where do I get the equipment to practice?

Some of the most common questions we receive as CCIE instructors and authors of CCIE content are "What type of equipment do I need to prepare for the CCIE lab?" "Should I rent rack time or should I buy my own equipment?" While the answers to these questions will depend on a number of factors, such as which CCIE tracks you plan on tackling, where you are located in the world, what other resources you have access to through work or school, this document can be used as a general boilerplate specification for building a rack of lab equipment to prepare for the Routing & Switching CCIE Lab exam within the scope of the Internetwork Expert line of CCIE preparation products.

One of the main advantages of using the Internetwork Expert product line of CCIE preparation products is that the physical lab topology for all of our products is the same. This means that no matter which Routing & Switching product you are using you will not need additional devices in your rack, and furthermore you won't even need to change the cabling once your rack is setup, ever!

Platforms Used

To start with let's examine the general specification we at Internetwork Expert use for our topology. The topology consists of two portions, devices within the candidate's control, and backbone or external devices whose configurations never change and are not within the candidate's control. The devices that the candidate configures include six routers of various platforms, two Catalyst 3550 switches, and two Catalyst 3560 switches. The external devices that the candidate does not configure include a Frame Relay switch, three backbone routers for injecting routing information, and a terminal server/access server.

Below you will find a table that lists the specific platforms that we use for our own development purposes. If you were to buy all of the devices listed below your topology would match ours exactly, however this option will typically not be cost effective for most candidates.

* 2511 comes in two models, 2511 and 2511-RJ. 2511 uses two 68-pin SCSI II cables, also known as "octal cables" that convert the 68-pin female to 8 x RJ-45s for console connections. The 2511-RJ model has 16 RJ-45 asynchronous interfaces that use RJ-45 cables wired for rollover, such as the blue Cisco console cables.

Now that we know specifically what devices are used in the Internetwork Expert specification let's talk about alternate platforms that can be used. When building a home lab it may not be the best choice to buy the identical platforms listed above as the topology could cost upwards of $15,000 USD. In order to avoid this large cost we recommend to candidates who want to build their home labs to start will less expensive platforms that will support 80-90% of the features covered in our products, and then to rent some rack time for any additional features that cannot be configured on the platforms that they have.

To define these alternate platforms let's look at the device requirements from a more general standpoint based on the interfaces required:

Based on these interface requirements some alternate platforms that could be used are:

* These platforms do not support layer 3 routing functions.  For labs that utilize layer 3 functionality of the 3550/3560 switches an external router such as a 2610 could be used to perform router-on-a-stick functionality to route between VLANs.

If you don't have a single router with 8 serial ports you can chain multiple routers together to build a compound Frame Relay switch. See this document for more information.

Now that we know what platform to use in the topology let's take a look at how the devices are cabled together. Below are the diagrams of the physical cabling followed by a list of specific cables that are required to connect all the devices. Note that these diagrams exclude the cabling for the access server which would be connected to the console port of all devices and power cables.

Okay, so you finally pieced together all your equipment, every cable is wrench tight and verified working, now what do you do about IOS versions? The current specification for the Routing & Switching CCIE Lab uses a variety of IOS versions from 12.2 through 12.4. Depending on which platforms you chose to build your topology the versions and feature sets you use will vary a little bit. The specific IOS version, feature set, and image names that we use are as follows. Note that the version numbering may be slightly different that what is available now as versions are typically deferred as new releases become available:

Questions or comments on this document? Contact Brian McGahan at bmcgahan@internetworkexpert.com