Your First Cisco Lab.

A lot of people want to have some kit at home to practise on but don't know where to start. I recommend starting small and building your kit list up slowly. You should probably start with two cheap 2500 routers. Make sure each one has a working serial interface. You can use loopback interfaces instead of ethernet and all the labs on www.howtonetwork.net are set up to use loopbacks.

Make sure you have a console cable and if your laptop has no COM port you will need a COM to USB cable. You can find them on ebay for a few bucks.

Remember that whatever you buy on ebay you can usually sell again for the same price. We will be posting a home rack series of articles very soon to help you find the best kit for the best price.