Michael Dale
This week I've had a bit of a chance to play with some new hardware I was given. I am well enough to be up and doing stuff again, its great :)
So yeah I've picked up a Cisco 2611 and Cisco 827-4v router.
The first one is a modular router that has two 10mbit Ethernet ports, it has been upgraded to 64mb and has a fairly new IOS on it. The 827 is an ADSL1 router with 4 analog telephone adapters (ATA) built in.
I'm trying to setup a RIP routing network between the 2611 and a OpenBSD box. I'm currently looking at two pieces of software to do this,
Zebra and
Xorp. These both sit on top of another operating system and handle routing.
It has been pretty interesting. I have been impressed with the Cisco gear. Once you'd had a real chance to play with it they work well. I like how the whole configuration is in one file, that makes life nice and easy.
I did do CCNA way back at school, but I'm required to do some Cisco stuff at UNI and I need to refresh my memory.
On another topic. I've run out of Ethernet ports at home, so I thought I'd spend a bit of money and get myself a cheap 24 port 100mbit managed switch. The switch I have purchased also does basic vlans, so that should be very helpful. The switch has cost me about $160 (yes very cheap) and can be found
here. I should get that in the next week or so.