That is why when we revised our lab workbook. You need to practice on more complex setups and really understand what is happening first hand. So what does that mean to you? The days of having a high level understanding of what is happening and passing the exam are gone. Then they dropped a few concepts such as wireless and voice as they now have the CCNA Wireless and CCNA Voice specific exams and added a lot more troubleshooting to the CCNA Routing & Switching 200-125 exam. Basically they moved about 80% of the old CCNA 640-802 exam topics into the new ICND1 100-101 exam. Cisco wants to make sure you really know your stuff on this exam. What Are Some Things I Need To Consider For My Cisco CCNA Lab?įirst is Cisco made the CCNA 200-125 exam quite a bit harder than the CCNA 640-802 exam. We really suggest you read through this entire article from top to bottom to understand how to build a proper lab for your CCENT & CCNA studies. No simulator can simulate that, so real routers and switches are invaluable. Anyway, you will come to find quite quickly that mistakes you make on Router 1 are affecting Router 4 all because you did not screw in a cable properly.

Dependent on what you do by mistake, you may see either the interface or protocol go down and based upon that it should give you a clue of where to start troubleshooting(hint, what layer is the interface at and what layer is the protocol at?). You need a physical router as the simulators just don’t have the ability to give you the hands on experience you need to see what happens when you disconnect a cable, put a cable in the wrong location or just plain configure the interface incorrectly. Real Routers & Switches are required for your CCNA Routing & Switching Lab! It is well worth spending 15 minutes reading these articles to avoid making a $500 mistake! So let’s start off with a basic concept that I hope we can all agree on. Please do not skip any of this information, as it is all very important for you to understand so you get the most value for your money in purchasing your kit. Many people ask us what would make a good CCENT or CCNA R&S 200-125 lab? In this article we will cover how to build an effective CCNA lab.

Cisco ccna practice labs