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Question on using a home lab VS work experience

I've never had the opportunity to do any WAN configuration . Mostly because every place I've worked, had an outside vendor take care of the external routers.

That being said:

Is it difficult to configure routers for T1 usage, frame etc? I have a home lab consisting of three 2500s, one 2600 , a pix 501 and a plethora of 2924 and 2950 switches. This is where the majority of my experience has come from (Can't really blow up switches and firewalls at work in the production environment. Boss wouldnt accept the answer of "higher learning" :-D )

Am I on the right track? Is home lab experience sufficient provided I (eventually) employ some advanced configurations?

Thanks for any comments/advice. I just do not want to have all of these certifications oneday, and end up not being able to "walk the walk."

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nodisco

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ASKER

Thanks for the comments.

Those are good recommendations about the PIX. I'll put that on my agenda.
thanks again

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Dr-IP

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ASKER

Great post Dr-IP, thanks.
Where is a good place to pick up some CSU/DSUs to practice with??? I'm assuming they have no ethernet connections on them since their sole purpose is to provide clocking ? (correct me if I'm wrong).

Thanks!

Dr-IP

It’s a little more complicated than that, they connect to the router via its serial port, and convert the data from the serial port to a form that can be transmitted over a T1. You can also get ones that plug into the WIC slot of Cisco routers like the 2600’s. Those are a CSU/DSU and serial port combined together into a single card. You can pick up some older CSU/DSU’s pretty cheap on EBay by the way, here is one I found that even has the cable for the Cisco router. I don’t know what it will sell for, but the price now is less than what the cable alone is worth.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=11175&item=5765533650&rd=1

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ASKER

Thanks I bid on that link you sent me. I guess I will interface it via DB-60 ?

Dr-IP

With a little luck yes, since in the picture the the end that goes to the router looks way to big to be a high density serial port connector.

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ASKER

thanks guys. The help is always appreciated

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ASKER

Dr-IP, the CSU/DSU is here and I'm trying to configure it. If you have a chance, could you lend me some of your expertise?

Thanks!

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21390630/Configuring-CSU-DSU.html