{"id":2153,"date":"2013-12-02T19:35:20","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T23:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/?p=2153"},"modified":"2013-12-02T19:35:20","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T23:35:20","slug":"cisco-switch-and-route-completed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.braindeadprojects.com\/blog\/what\/cisco-switch-and-route-completed\/","title":{"rendered":"Cisco Switch and Route Completed!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently took my CCNP Switch Exam (642-813)<\/a>, passing on my first attempt. While I mostly used GNS3\/dynamips<\/a> to simulate routers for my CCNP Route Exam (642-902)<\/a>, I actually put together physical hardware for the Switch Exam. My switch lab consists of a Cyclades ACS48 terminal server<\/a>, an APC 7900 switched PDU<\/a>, 3 Cisco 3550-EMI multilayer switches<\/a>, a 24 port patch panel<\/a>, a Cisco SPA942 IP phone<\/a>, and 2 ZNYX PCI 4-port ethernet cards<\/a> for my desktop (for a combined 8 NICs dedicated to virtualization).<\/p>\n

\"SwitchLab0\"<\/a>
8 strands of cat5e can fit in a 3\/4″ conduit, but it’s a tight fit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Initially I had thought there were no emulators for Cisco switches, but upon news that GNS3 would be supporting switching in their upcoming 1.0 release, I started digging. Apparently it’s a well established fact<\/a> that Cisco switching can indeed be emulated and there are leaked binaries compiled for Linux for a handful of layer 2 IOS images. Hewlett Packard also has a 64-bit VM emulator for their VSR1000 Virtual Services Router Series. <\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"GNS3<\/a>
I think it’s safe to say GNS3’s fundraising will be successful when it ends.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

While IOU is nice to work with, there are a number of bugs in the images. First of all, while you can configure private VLAN’s, they don’t appear to work (and they’re not supported on my physical 3550’s). Testing dynamic arp inspection in the following images also doesn’t seem to work:<\/p>\n