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Okay so we're done with prepare, we're done with plan,
now we're going into the design stage.
What do you want to get out of this?
You want a comprehensive detailed design that meets your technical
requirements and incorporates specifications that will support the
scalability of your home based network. That's what you're trying to achieve here.
At this stage is where you're going to get into the nuts and bolts of, okay,
what physical chassis do I want?
In an ideal world, do I want 3750 switches or 3560 switches?
Do I want to buy a Nexus switch if I got a big bonus and I want to blow it on that?
What do you want as far as physical chassis?
For the routers that are modular,
what types of WICs or network modules are you going to need to support your topology?
Chances are, if you're going to be incorporating
serial interfaces into your topology,
you're going to need buy one or more network modules or WICs
that support serial interfaces.
What type of cables you're going to need.
We talked about that, right?
Once you identify the WIC or the network module that supports your
serial interfaces, very important to figure out,
okay, what's the physical connector of that serial
interface? Is it DB9? Is it something else?
Then identify the model number of the Cisco cable that goes along with that interface.
What quantity of memory will you need to support your desired IOS?
Chances are if you're buying used equipment,
this isn't a huge concern because you're just going to get what you're going to get.
When you go onto eBay or some other website or even Cisco's--
well, Cisco, I don't think, sells used equipment directly,
but if you're buying used equipment, you just know upfront that,
okay, it should have enough memory to support the IOS in there.
It'd be pretty bad for someone to sell you a router and they say
it supports 12.4 but it's only got some dinky amount of memory
that doesn't really support that.
And where do you plan to purchase all this stuff from?
What website? There are multiple websites to get this.
So, what's the end result of the design stage?
Once again we're talking about a spreadsheet
where you're going to [write?]--
the spreadsheet's going to have-- at the end of the day,
you're going to have a spreadsheet that says, okay, I want
three 3560s running 12250SE advanced IP services.
I want two, whatever, 1841 routers running this, this, and this.
So that's what you want here, at the end of the design stages where you know
what hardware and software you're going to need to purchase.
Now we are into the implement stage. So by the time you get to the implement stage,
you know exactly what you're going to be buying. So you're done with that now,
you know what you're going to buy.
Implement is where you buy it.
So implement is where you buy it and you implement it, you build your network.
So at this stage you're going to purchase everything, you're going to
rack and stack everything, you're going to cable everything, and
then you're going to hold your breath and cross your fingers as you
press the power buttons, that everything
works. So that's what's going to happen here.
So let's talk about, I've got a few slides here on the implement stage,
what you're going to be doing.
So some tips.
When you're buying used equipment, make sure you get
these three pieces of information upfront.
The return policy, what if you buy something and it doesn't turn on?
It's just broken or it turns on and it just spits out nothing but
garbage, it's got bugs in it. You got to know what your recourse is there.
What current IOS is on the device? Because going back to what I said at the beginning,
I'm assuming that you don't have access to IOS. Whatever device you purchase,
you're stuck with the IOS on that device.
A lot of people, when they're selling routers
and switches on eBay, they don't list that.
They don't tell you what the version and what the feature set is
of the software on that device.
You need to know that, otherwise you could be stuck with a router or
switch that doesn't support half of what you want to do.
Shipping costs - think about that.
You might think to yourself, oh, awesome,
I budgeted $500 for this and after adding up everything for these
routers and these switches, I'm at $495, whew, good.
Uh oh, guess what, you just forgot it's going to cost you an extra 250 bucks
in shipping charges for everything. So think about that as well.
If you plan on using eBay, that's a great link.
It's actually a link that's developed for buying used Cisco equipment on eBay.
I read through it, some really great tips on there.
By the way, if you're not familiar already with this,
in the front end that you're using to watch this right now, there's a Files tab.
If you haven't already clicked on the Files tab,
in there there's a PDF of this presentation.
So everything I'm already showing you is in PDF form, so if you haven't
already downloaded that, it's there for you right now.
So you don't have to frantically scribble down these URLs,
just download the PDF and it's in there.
Make sure you purchase a flat console cable.
You guys ever seen one of these?
You're going to need to connect to the console port of your
routers and switches, you're going to need a cable like this.
If you don't get one from the vendor, make sure you find one somewhere.
This one actually has a USB connector connected
to it so I can connect to the USB port.
So you're going to want to get a USB to DB9 connector and then one
of these flat blue cables so you can connect to the console ports
of your routers and switches.
Now, specifically when we're talking about switches,
make sure you buy multilayer switches, true Layer 3 switches.
There are some switches out there that Cisco sells,
especially a lot of the older ones, that say they can do routing,
but when you read the data sheet of the switch,
all it's capable of is static routes, or maybe all it's capable of is RIP.
You're going to be really disappointed if you buy one of those.
You're going to want to buy a switch that supports full multilayer capability,
because then when you're done with your switching stuff,
you can now convert that into a router.
If that switch supports BGP and OSPF and IPv6,
now you've got a dual-purpose device, a device that can operate as a switch
and as a router, which is the best of all worlds.
As far as the interfaces on-- this isn't really so much of a concern
as far as switches are concerned - more of a router thing.
But make sure that you're buying interfaces
that are, when it comes to Ethernet, at least dual speed
interfaces - 10/100 interfaces. Ideally, 10/100/1000.
Why I put this in here is because there's a lot of older routers out there
that are single speed interfaces, they're like built-in just 100 Meg fast Ethernet.
Or on the really old stuff, just 10 Meg Ethernet. And you're going
to be really limited if you buy an interface that's like that.
You're going to have a lot more flexibility if you've got dual speed
or tri-speed interfaces, because then you can practice things like,
well, what actually happens when I have a speed or duplex mismatch? What do I see?
If I change the speed of my interface, how does Spanning-Tree react to that?
And ability to connect it to older legacy equipment as well.
I already mentioned this, but I will reinforce it again.
As far as switches are concerned, make sure that the model of switch
you buy supports private VLANs, IPv6, DHCP snooping - those things
that fall into the category of switching
security features. 3550s do not support that.
I advise you not to buy Catalyst 3550s because they don't support private VLANs,
they don't support DHCP snooping, so be very careful
that whatever model of switch you buy does
support, at a minimum, these three features.
If you can find a switch that supports these three - private VLANs,
IPv6 and DHCP snooping, it probably supports all the other stuff as well,
that you're going to want to do.
This also goes back to my recommendation I mentioned earlier about the benefits
of using real hardware switches as opposed to software based switches.
For example, if you do have access to IOS,
if you're using GNS, GNS gets real difficult if you want to do switching.
You've got some options of getting like a-- of putting in a router
IOS that supports a switching module.
And if you can somehow get a hold of L2 IOU,
which most people cannot, the newer versions of GNS support that.
But both of those, L2 IOU and the switching modules,
they don't support private VLANs, they don't support DHCP snooping,
and a lot of that other stuff.
So that's why you really probably want to use
hardware switches to get that experience.
When purchasing routers, my personal recommendation,
a router should have, at a minimum, two
FastEthernet interfaces and two serial interfaces.
Absolute minimum. Anything less than that and you're really limiting yourself on what
you can do and what type of topologies you can design.
On routers, make sure that the FastEthernet ports are really routed ports
and not switch modules. You can be
unpleasantly surprised if you buy a router and
it's got a 4-port Ethernet module and it turns out that those 4 Ethernet
ports are really 4 Ethernet switching ports -
they're not capable of routing. So you don't
want to be unpleasantly surprised with that.
Purchase at least one really long Ethernet cable to connect to your
laptop and to your hub. You're probably going
to want to take Ethernet sniffer traces.
That's one of the biggest advantages of having a home-based lab,
is you can put a hub in it somewhere and capture sniffer traces
and see, what does an MST BPDU really look like?
What does a BGP update look like, and all the path attributes in it?
So you're going to [want to?] have a long Ethernet cable to connect your laptop
to that hub and then to all the devices in your rack.
I will stress this again, buy a hub.
I'm not talking about a switch. I'm talking about a real old-fashioned hub.
You probably can't buy them new.
I don't think any of the electronic stores like Best Buy or Circuit City
even sell hubs these days.
But you should be able to go onto eBay and buy an old hub,
so that you can get those sniffer traces.
When you're actually implementing is when you're racking and stacking -
this is sort of common sense right here - put the heaviest items on the
bottom of the rack so it doesn't fall over and crush you.
Ensure that all the equipment fans have room to breathe.
Don't push everything right up against the wall where the fans are
just blowing their hot air right into the wall and it's reflecting
right back inside the fan again. You don't want that.
Make sure the fans have a little bit of space to blow all that hot air out.
If you plan on tying up your cables because you don't like messy cables,
use VELCRO ties.
You don't want to use stuff that's more permanent than that like
zip ties and stuff, because like it mentions here,
you're probably going to be re-cabling stuff
frequently to come up with new topologies.
You don't want to be snipping your zip ties to have to re-cable everything.
VELCRO ties are great for that.
Now we are in the operate stage.
It's at this stage you finally get to have fun.
You've purchased everything, you've stacked it, you've cabled it, you've turned it on.
Now you can actually start using it. Finally.
So some tips at the operating stage.
Don't leave your devices on 24 hours a day unless you enjoy paying
the electric company your hard earned money.
This stuff is going to draw a significant amount of electricity,
don't turn it on when you're not using it, save yourself your bill.
Make it a habit of saving your text files,
your configs to text files, prior to shutting off equipment.
Nothing more frustrating than you spend an hour and a half building
a really complex BGP topology with redistribution to EIGRP and OSPF
and all this stuff and then you shut off, you
go, oh my gosh, I just shut everything off,
I didn't save my configs.
Now you've got to rebuild it all when you start again from scratch.
So save your configs to text files so you can just
copy and paste them back in when you turn your stuff back on.
Make sure your cables don't pose a tripping hazard to yourself.
If you can, keep your door to your room open to keep your room cool.
If you keep that door closed, be prepared to
sweat. It's going to get really hot in there.
Make sure you dust regularly.
You don't want a lot of dust getting in there and frying out some
of the circuits in your routers and switches.
Some tips about hardware.
What we have here at INE is-- in case you're not familiar with this,
we have-- I told you we've got our CCIE racks,
but those are based on virtual routers which are tied into physical switches.
Then we have CCNA/CCNP racks, which use real routers and real switches,
I'll show you a diagram of what those look like in just a second.
So for those of you who are curious about how we built our racks,
this is what we're using.
Now I'm going to give you a little bit of disclaimer right here, that
a lot of this stuff is old, a lot of these network modules that
you see here are no longer sold, but that's good for you, because
if you try to replicate that, that means you
can buy this stuff real cheaply on eBay.
The stuff that Cisco is still selling right now,
you're going to find that is more expensive than the stuff that's
gone end-of-sale that they're no longer selling. That's the cheaper stuff.
This is what we've got. We've got a couple of 3845s.
One of those 3845s serves the purpose of our terminal server
as well as our frame relay switch. So that one router is doing dual purpose,
terminal server and frame relay switch. The
other 3845 is being used as a backbone router.
So in our particular implementation, that second 3845 is preconfigured for
BGP and OSPF and stuff, and it's injecting a lot routes into the rack.
And you can see here the various network modules we have that
support all of those serial interfaces we need for frame relay.
And then each rack has a couple of Cisco 2811s, and you can see here
the various modules in there, and a couple of 1841s.
The 2011s and 1841s, all of those are
configured with 15.x IOS. That's kind of nice.
In case you plan on following suit here, I provide a URL for you.
This is a great PDF.
If you open it up, it shows you a listing of all these router platforms
and just dozens and dozens and dozens of network modules and WIC cards
and what's supported in which particular platform.
If a WIC card or a network module is end of support / end of life,
it tells you what the replacement is. So a great PDF to have on hand.
As far as switches are concerned, currently, right now, at the time
I'm recording this, which is May 13th, 2005,
we have 3 switches. One of them is a 3560.
The other two are 3550s. But within the next two to three weeks,
we're going to be getting rid of those 3550s and swapping them out
for 3560s, so all three of them will be 3560s.
There's the particular model number in case you're curious. They're 24-port 3560s.
This is how our rack is put together right now.
If you were to recreate this at home, it's a total of 6 routers.
You've got the two backbone routers there plus
the four workgroup routers, and three switches.
You can see the various LAN and WAN cabling that we've got.
I've found that this topology, I can pretty
much tweak this to make any topology I want.
I've been able to come up with really complex BGP topologies,
and private VLANs, and all kinds of stuff using this.
If I was to build a home lab myself, I would
probably replicate this at a minimum.
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