CCNA to start, then CCNP if I can show the ability to my supervisors. At some point once I'm qualified, I'll be moving to support production routers. That's also another reason I'm excited but concerned. I'm very good at what I do now and I want to get just as good with routers/switches. My main issue, as I said is I've lost my skillset and I want to get something up and running now for hands on without wasting hours asking professor google for answers that arent necessarily going to be from people who know what their doing. I figured the cisco forum would be the best place to get help.I The 2500s have the usual AUI transceivers, connected to one of the switches. I havent done anything with the rest of the routers/switches yet aside from a quick power on to make sure they work and spec check.

Okay, well I don't know anything about certifications ie. what is included where but firstly do you know what routing protocol they are using currently on your network.

That is definitely the one you should be using and if it is OSPF it is well worth using because it can take some time to get familiar with the OSPF database.

If you have any idea of what the production network is like now that would help to steer you in the right direction because you may well be emulate a lot of that.

You won't be able to use L3 switches to route your vlans because you don't have any but you can get familiar with vlans, IP addressing, STP, L3 routing protocols etc. with the kit you have.

And like I say you can use router siubinterfaces to route between vlans.

Perhaps others who are familiar with what CCNA/CCNP etc. involve can add to this but any information you have about your current network would help.

As an example you could easily emulate a WAN by using one or a couple of your switches and a few of you routers and then you could have two or more sites connecting to the WAN that emulate local sites.

That would be very easy to do with your kit.

Sorry to be so vague but you really could set it up a lot of different ways.

The more information you can give the better.

Also worth bearing in mind the Cisco Learning Network where they deal with certifications and so may be able to help more with lab scenarios.

Jon

Thanks for the response. I think I may have posed too vague of a question, with too many variables. For the sake of either deciding to move in this direction, or going back to Professor Google, would you be willing to help diagram this (from your reply)?

===============

As an example you could easily emulate a WAN by using one or a couple of your switches and a few of you routers and then you could have two or more sites connecting to the WAN that emulate local sites.

===============

At this point, the exact details on what I'll be supporting are pretty vague. Basically I'm being told we'll help when there are problems with routers/configs, and it could be pretty much an combination of protocols. Let's just say there are MANY devices, on many different sites. I'm thinking maybe use the 2500s for RIP, and then 1800s for OSPF, and maybe the 2x2800s for BGP, just to try to cover all bases, with switches wherever necessary. If you think my request is too much of a resource-hog, I understand perfectly. I'll try to just start with 2 routers and a switch, see if I can find some kind of step-by-step summary online.  I've actually found a few , but they all give general details like "Configure the router. Configure the switch. Test the path. Not exactly what I need lol    There was even one that, once I deciphered it, I realized it was either written to intentionally mislead of it was written by someone with less knowledge than I because the diagram had 2 routers connected but the IPs on the interfacing ports were completely different class B networks.

At any rate, I've attached a very rough start at a plan. PLEASE, before looking at the plan, ensure there are no hard objects near you in case the plan is so grossly impossible you begin laughing and pass out from lack of oxygen due to laughing so hard. I'd hate to cause a head injury. If it looks like it's feasible, and you're willing to help by providing basic command assistance, I'd be very appreciative.

EDIT: I just purchased a 4-port ethernet NM for the 2821 and a 16-port NME for the 2851 so I have a bit more capability with those two.

 PLEASE, before looking at the plan, ensure there are no hard objects near you in case the plan is so grossly impossible you begin laughing and pass out from lack of oxygen due to laughing so hard.

Okay, I'm pretty safe, no hard objects nearby :-)

Seriously no one is going to laugh, you are just starting out and we are to help.

So I am looking at it from how to learn from a practical perspective ie. so you can get up to speed for a production environment not for certification so you may or may not want to take my advice.

Firstly I would not interconnect your switches like that because with the kit you have you can emulate a LAN/WAN environment if you want.

Secondly you are wasting ports on your routers ie. you do not need to connect multiple routers to the same switch.

A very basic setup could be -

SW1 -> R1 -> R2 -> R3 -> SW2

in effect R2 is your WAN with two sites connected to it. On each switch you can create multiple vlans and use subinterfaces on the router interface connecting to the switch to route between the vlans.

Then you can run a routing protocol between the routers to exchange the routes between each sites.

You can very easily extend this by for example -

1) adding another switch to SW1 or SW2 using a trunk and extending the vlans to that switch

2) adding more routers and running multiple routing protocols eg.

SW1 -> R1 -> R2 -> R3 -> R4 -> R5 -> SW2

here R3 is still the WAN but you could run OSPF between R1 and R2 and BGP between R2 and R3 and the same principle on the other side. Then you would need to do redistribution between routing protocols on R2 and R4.

Or you could run OSPF end to end and have each site and the WAN in their own OSPF areas to get a feel for how a multi area OSPF network looks like.

Or any other number of variations perhaps interconnecting your WAN routers so you end up with multiple possible paths between each site.

Basically what I am trying to do is emulate on a small scale what you might come across in a production environment which your original setup doesn't, no criticism intended at all.

Bear in mind that it doesn't have to be setup in one way only. The above are just suggestions but it should be easy to move things around eg. you may want to setup your switches in a loop just to see how STP behaves etc.

Finally although you have a lot of kit bear in mind the use of loopbacks ie. you can create multiple loopback interfaces on a router and advertise that with a routing protocol which means you are not limited simply by the number of physical interfaces on your routers.

Quite useful if you wanted to emulate internet connectivity with a single router connected to your setup.

All that said though if you are happier with your setup then use that because you need to be comfortable with what you are doing. You could still learn a lot with what you are proposing and none of the above is taking into account any CCNA things.

So please feel free to ignore all of the above if you are not happy with it because it may not suit what you want to do.

We can help with a lot of the configuration if you need it but I don't want to push you in the wrong direction and I have definitely erred on the side of a production network rather than certification.

Jon

Jon,

Your logic is flawless. My solution was just shooting in the dark, with my eyes closed (and apparently loaded with blanks). Let's go with yours. Since the environment which I will be supporting will have probably every possible combination of routing protocols, the main issue I need is to get exposure to as many as possible. That shouldn't be an issue because, while not as common, I understand it's possible to have more than one protocol per router. Also, since I have 4 (right now) switches, feel free to toss them all in somewhere. BTW, I put together a bunch of 1' and 2' catV cables so I'm not worried about cabling. I have no idea what to do with the T1 interfaces. At any rate, as I said, your WAN emulation sounds like a much better idea.

Okay, should have asked if you have crossover cables ie. so you can connect a router to a router direct.

If you don't then no worries, you can use one of your switches and use different vlans.

Let me know.

So I would recommend getting the very basic setup I described going and then from there it should be relatively easy to add more in and make things a bit more complex.

Are you okay to get that started or do you need some pointers ?

Happy to help get you up and running just don't want to be telling you things you already know.

Finally in your schematic you show end devices, presumably PCs,  connected to the switches.

How many of these do you have ?

Jon

Jon, re: crossover cables, I have (literally) about 500 meters of catV, and the rj45 ends/crimpers. I can build as many crossover as I need and I have the pinout memorized.

As far as end devices, I have a few windows systems, 5 or 6 sun, a couple HP-UX, 3 or 4 AIX, maybe 5 Centos ( yes, I was a UNIX/Linux geek).

The configuration is my major weak spot. I've ordered some books based on suggestions in this thread, but my Cisco knowledge right now is seriously lacking. Yes, I plan on getting certification, and I'll be getting training in a couple months, but I want to work on my base knowledge now. If I can get this config up and running (with your help), then I'll save all the configs and start experimenting, and walking through the books trying commands. I just need a good env to start with. And I really liked your suggested configuration. That's a great way to help me begin preparing for what I'll be doing on the job. Thanks again.

Okay, it should be relatively easy to get the basic setup up and running.

So you only need the crossovers for the R1 -> R2 -> R3 connectivity.

So I'm assuming you are happy to connect up the basic setup we have discussed.

Configuration wise are you okay getting to enable mode on all your devices ?

If so then I can guide you through creating the vlans, connecting to the routers with subinterfaces for routing between vlans, configuring the routers to exchange routing information etc.

In effect what we will setup will be two vlans/IP subnets per site, route them on their local router and then exchange those routes between all the routers so you should be able to ping between devices in different vlans in the same site and also between sites.

You will need an IP addressing scheme but nothing complicated ie. for each vlan you will need a /24 subnet. You don't actually need anywhere near that many IPs but it is a common production size.

For the router to router connections you need a subnet per connection and these only need to be /30s ie. 255.255.255.252 because you only need two useable IPs per subnet.

So if you decide on those and let me know where you are with the actual devices ie. are they ready to configure all this then I'll come back with some configuration details.

I'll use OSPF as the WAN routing protocol for now as it is a commonly used protocol.

Jon

Jon,

If we can start with a basic diagram (aka pretty picture for dummy), designating which cable to which port, and then an associated IP, that would probably be the most do-able. I've been experimenting and I have (for now) the 2x2500 crossover via  serial, so I can issue basic commands. Not a clue as to the vlan config.

Maybe start with setting up the router ports/IPs, get them all done, then do the VLAN and check connectivity? However you think it best to proceed.

Okay, I don't have anything to do diagrams with but it will be as shown with the basic setup really.

I would use your other routers rather than the 2500s as the others should have a more recent IOS on them.

So fi you pick three of your routers then -

1) connect them to each other using a crossover eg.

R1 -> R2 -> R3

2) then using straight thru cables connect a switch each to R1 and R3

3) when you have done that boot up all the devices. If they ask you if you want to configure them just answer no.

If we can get to the stage where all devices are up and running, you can console into all of them and you have a prompt then i'll walk you through a very basic configuration to get end to end connectivity.

So are you okay with the above and can you get to that stage ?

Jon

Jon,

They're connected and I have console access.

R1 (1841) FE 0/0 to R2 GE 0/1 10.10.10.2 255.255.255.252

FE 0/1 to switch1 port1               10.30.10.2 255.255.255.0

R2 GE 0/0 to R3 GE 0/1 10.20.10.1 255.255.255.252

GE 0/1 to R1 FE 0/0        10.10.10.1 255.255.255.252

R3 GE 0/0 to switch2 port1     10.30.10.4 255.255.255.0

GE 0/1 to R2 GE 0/0    10.20.10.2 255.255.255.252

Switch1 port9 to switch2 port9

EDIT: UPDATE: I'm actually in the process of trying to get the switch card working on R2. I'll update the config when done.

EDIT: UPDATED: I gave up on the 16-port switch card. It's way beyond my current skillset.

Don't want to overload you with instructions so I haven't included how to setup telnet to the devices.

Do you know how to do this or do you need help with it ?

So i'll give you one site's configuration for the vlans etc and you can replicate on the other site. You will need to use different IP subnets in the other site. The vlan numbers can be the same but they aren't the same vlan so you may want to use different vlan numbers for clarity.

vlan 10 = 192.168.10.0 255.255.255.0
vlan 11 = 192.168.11.0 255.255.255.0

Switches first -

You need to create the vlans, assign the end device ports into those vlans and use a trunk link to connect to the router -

switch(config)# vlan 10
switch(config-vlan)# name v10
switch(config-vlan)# exit

repeat the above for vlan 11

then connect two end devices into ports on the switch and for each port assign it into the corresponding vlan eg.

int <x>
switchport
switchport mode access
switch access vlan 10

repeat for vlan 11 client

finally we need a trunk link to the router so for the port connecting to the router -

int <x>
switchport
switchport mode trunk

On the interface of the router that connects to the switch -

int fa0/1.10
encapsulation dot1q 10
ip address 192.168.10.1 255.255.255.0

int fa0/1.11
encapsulation dot1q 11
ip address 192.168.11.1 255.255.255.0

then allocate an IP to each PC from it's vlan's IP subnet and set the default gateway to the corresponding subinterface IP.

You should now be able to ping between the PCs. Make sure if there are personal firewalls on the PCs you turn them off to test.

R1s - WAN connection to R2

int fa0/0
ip address 192.168.12.1 255.255.255.252

R2'S connection to R1

int gi0/1
ip address 192.168.12.2 255.255.255.252

R2's connection to R3

int gi0/0
ip address 192.168.12.5 255.255.255.252

R3's connection to R2

int gi0/1
ip address 192.168.12.6 255.255.255.252

and then you need to setup R3's subinterfaces and the switch in site 2

Once you have done all that then routing between sites -

R1 OSPF configuration -

router ospf 10
network 192.168.10.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
network 192.168.11.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
network 192.168.12.0 0.0.0.3 area 0

R2 -

router ospf 10
network 192.168.12.0 0.0.0.7 area 0

R3 -

router ospf 10
network 192.168.12.4 0.0.0.3 area 0
+ the IP subnets for your vlans. If you make the subnet mask 255.255.255.0 then the wildcard mask in OSPF is the same as the client vlans in site 1 ie. 0.0.0.255.

The above is a very basic configuration to get you started. If you can get all of the above working then it is a good start and should then allow you to start experimenting with other features, adding in more devices etc.

Jon

Jon,

Thank you very much. This seems to be exactly what I need to get started. I had to make some changes to the addressing since I have a hard-coded ip serial server that I need to add to the mix so I don't have to keep running down to my basement (aka datacenter south lol). I did have a question about the switches. It seems as if I can only have one vlan up at a time per switch, and if I bring one up the other goes down.