Suggestions for BCMSN lab?

I'm putting together a BCMSN lab for myself. I've only barely begun studying, and VLAN was my weakest subject in CCNA, so I'm unsure what hardware I need to proceed.

So far I've got a whole stack of 2500s, and a 1912 in the mail, but as I understand it I need at least a 2600 for the inter-VLAN routing. (Or I could use a 3550 to do L3 switching? But finding a cheap used 3550 doesn't seem realistic yet.)

Will the 1912 suffice to do the trunking? The Lammle CCNA quotes configurations for a 1900 doing ISL, on a FA uplink port. That same Lammle also refers to 2950 configs, but what about a 2912 / 2924? I have been making use of

formatting link
and there's a 2924XL in the pod I've used, but "switchport mode trunk" is an invalid command. (The IOS may be too old?)

In short - which switch(es) can I use to uplink to a router for inter-VLAN? (I'd like to practice with more than just one.)

Now, on to the router. I don't want to assume anything, so I'll just ask: can a 2500 support VLANs?

Or what about a 2610 without any fast ethernet ports? There's one of those in the expert-labs pod, and all of the trunk / VTP commands work on e0/0, yet the Lammle had told me a FE interface would be required.

Finally, what IOS at a minimum should I be running to practice for the current BCMSN? Will 12.0 suffice?

Thanks for any suggestions and comments!

Reply to
nemo
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This is a guess.

I think that you need a Fe port for trunking of any kind, was never put into the 10M ports.

The place to look was the release notes. I would guess that now a lot if this in in the Feature NAvigator.

What you need to do is to scour the release notes and product brochures for the features that you need.

Assume that the material has NO negatives in it. That is it will NEVER say - By the way unllike all of the other models this one does not support xyz. It is a one way street. With things like the old ......XL switches it can be very hard to figure out exactly what is supported and what is not.

I worked with all of this every day about 5 years ago and it was sometimes really tough to supply stuff that worked. I recall opening TAC cases to determine if model XX did ISL or not, and then getting the wrong answer.

I seem to recall that with the 29....[xl] ([optional]) The models changed very fast with the exact same model number being used for different hardware.

IIRC 2900xl is NOT at all the same as 2900.

Good luck. One thing is that they are cheaper now:))

Reply to
anybody43

[snip]

2610's (10Mbs only routers) can do trunking depending on the IOS. I've done it personally and posted the prerequisites before.

Reply to
Hansang Bae

Good to have you back.

Thanks for that. The 10M no trunk rule was one that seemed I think to work for me for a bit.

However, what can you connect it to? Good for lab I guess.

Reply to
anybody43

Thanks for the answers so far, everyone.

I think I found the answer to one particular question, too. Richard Deal states in his BCMSN,

"802.1Q and ISL are supported on the routers, but ISL is supported only on Fast Ethernet or faster ports."

I'm not as concerned with ISL, as Cisco is phasing it out. Also, from my limited understanding, once you've picked the one or the other, the configuration is largely the same, so the difference is really in just the encapsulation command itself.

I'm still trying to determine if a 2900XL will support trunking with a recent IOS. I know a 2950 will, but those are still relatively expensive on eBay.

I'm also still trying to determine the cheapest router I can use for the inter-VLAN. (I'll be using router on a stick, unless I find some really good deal on a 3550.) Or I suppose I could hunt down a 2514...

Reply to
nemo

Lab is right. And some very low end use I suppose.

Reply to
Hansang Bae

snipped-for-privacy@weathersong.net wrote: [snip]

I'm almost positive 2900XLs could only do ISL and not dot1Q. The XL models were a bit wacky becaus there it went through quite a few transitions. As I recall, even the LED label/stamping colors made a difference in the mdoel number!

No 2500's can do trunking. 2610 is the lowest model that will do dot1q.

Reply to
Hansang Bae

The 2900XLs will quite happily do dot1q - at least the 8MB models.

B
Reply to
Bob Goddard

Greettings,

A 2900-xl (with reasonably current IOS) will support both ISL and dot1q, whereas a 2950 only does dot1q. Its about the only thing a

2900-xl can do that a 2950 can't.............;-) The other annoying thing about the 2900-xl is that the interface range command is not accepted. Grrrrrrrr......;-(

Some of the fairly recent Ethernet (10Mb) versions of IOS on some platforms can do trunking, but generally you need 100Mb to be able to do trunking.

Cheers.......................pk.

Reply to
Peter

Again, thanks for the replies, everyone. Looks like I'll be bargain hunting on a 2900XL and a 2610. The 2514 idea was to do inter-VLAN the old-fashioned way; the 14 has two Ethernet interfaces. I think I could do the setup for Ethernet routing in my head, though, so practice wouldn't be as useful as with a trunk to a router.

Reply to
nemo

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