Part One - Purchasing Your First Router
This series will begin with Part One and new parts will be added over a period of time. Part One will begin with basics and each part will add new pieces of equipment to the lab or explain how to set up the equipment.
If you are working on your CCNA, you need to get some hands-on experience with routers, and if possible, switches. Let? start with routers. You should purchase at least one router to start getting some hands-on experience. Usually, one of the best places to find routers at a decent price is www.ebay.com. Go to the eBay site and just type the word ?isco?in the search window and it will bring up all the Cisco items currently up for bid. If you want to bid on an item, you?l have to register. It doesn? cost anything to register. If you use an anonymous email address (like Hotmail, Yahoo, Lycos, etc.), you?l have to give them a credit card number. This is to protect you and the other bidders in case someone buys something, pays for it, and doesn? receive the item. It? also very important that you know exactly what you?e buying. Make sure you email the seller with any questions before buying. Many people have been disappointed because they didn? know exactly what they were getting. Another thing you should probably do is sign up with the PayPal service (www.paypal.com) because the majority of people selling items on eBay use this as a method of receiving payment. There are also thousands of Cisco retailers out on the Internet selling Cisco equipment. This is usually more expensive, however.
OK, so you?e all registered on eBay and you?e ready to purchase your first router. Which kind should you get?There are so many to choose from. The most popular first router that many people get is the 2501 model (two serial ports, one Ethernet port). This is fine except that it is usually expensive. Because of its popularity, people normally overbid on the 2501 and pay too much for it. Its list price is actually one of the lowest compared to all the other 2500 series routers, but people continue to pay high prices for it. So, when you bid on any item, don? get caught up in ?idding fever?and overbid just to beat out the next person. You can sometimes watch people have bidding wars just to win the auction, even though they end up paying a ridiculous amount for the item. Remember, be patient. If you don? win an auction for an item, there will always be another of the same item on auction. If you are patient and don? get caught up in bidding wars, you will end up purchasing equipment at an excellent price. We have seen a 2501 sell for between $600 and $850 on eBay. What we?l normally do is perform an advanced search on items that have already sold to see what prices were paid for the items. For example, we noticed that a 2501 sold for between $600 and $850. What we?l try to do is purchase a 2501 for no more than $600.
If a 2501 is too expensive at this time, you can normally get a 2502 (two serial ports, one token ring port) for between $350 and $450. This is OK because you?l need a token ring router for your lab anyway. Sometimes you can find a 2502 and a 2504 (two serial ports, one token ring port, one ISDN BRI port) bundled together for about $750.
If the 2500 series are just too expensive, a great series of routers to look at are the end-of-life 3100 series and the 3200 series. We would like to thank one of our readers, Serg Perfi, for bringing these routers to our attention. These routers actually run the 2500 IOS and are fixed configuration routers. They'll do everything that the 2500 series can do but you should make sure that they are maxed out on the flash so you can run the most recent IOS's. You can usually get these routers for about $200.00 or less. Go to Cisco's website to learn more about them.
Once you decide what router(s) you can afford, you need to make sure that it? got the correct amount of RAM and Flash memory to make it worth your while. Your best bet is to purchase a router that has 16 MB RAM and 16 MB flash if you?e buying a 2500 series router (2501, 2502, 2504, etc.). If you want to put the latest version of the Enterprise Edition IOS on the router, which is the IOS currently being used in the CCIE R/S lab, the router is required to have 16 MB of flash memory. The current version of IOS is 12.0.9 at the time of this writing. The Enterprise Edition of the IOS allows you to do IP, IPX, AppleTalk, etc. Also, if you don? have a CCO (Cisco Connection Online) ID and password, you should make sure that the router has at least IOS version 11.2 or higher Enterprise Edition software when you purchase it so you?e able to do IP, IPX, AppleTalk, etc. Without a CCO ID and password, you can? upgrade your IOS. In order to get a CCO ID and password, you must have a maintenance contract with Cisco, which costs money. You can call Cisco for pricing on this. If you go to the www.cisco.com site, you?l notice that there is an option to log in. This is where you use your CCO ID and password to receive access to the IOS software upgrades and many other features.
Let? go back to flash memory for a moment. If you happen to purchase a 2500 series router that has 8 MB of flash and you want to upgrade it to 16 MB of flash, you must make sure that the Boot ROM version is at least 10.2(8a) or higher. If it? not, you can? upgrade your flash until you order the new Boot ROMS from Cisco. You can get them for free if you have a maintenance contract with Cisco, otherwise, you may have to purchase them. We?e seen them for sale on eBay for around $10.00 per set. Doing a ?how version?command on the router will tell you what Boot ROM version you have. That? why it? best to just buy a 2500 series router with 16 MB RAM and 16 MB flash and Enterprise Edition IOS version 11.2 or higher if you don? want the hassle of upgrading. However, upgrading a router is excellent hands-on experience and you can learn a lot from it.
If possible, make sure that the router comes with a power cord and a console cable kit. You?l need the console cable kit to access the router. If the router doesn? come with the console cable kit, you can usually pick them up for about $5.00 or $10.00 on eBay.
The important thing is that you start getting some hands-on experience with routers. Once you get your first router, open it up (you would be surprised at how many people don? know how to do this), look at where the RAM and flash memory is located, pull out the flash memory and put it back in again, etc. Get a feel for the interior of the router. Go to the website http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/access/acs_fix/cis2500/ and read the information on the 2500 series routers. This site will give you some good information on installation and configuration.
