CCIE Voice – Home Lab

Ideally we would all like to have a replica of the lab at home to study with but Mr. Mastercard and Mr. Car-Note usually keep that idea in the “Sure would be nice” category. I have purchased and used a few sessions from Proctor Labs and have been pretty pleased, but I find them more useful if you are trying to do a mock lab attempt. I find my self studying in a more topic based fashion and beating the ideas and configuration into my head with repetition. This helps me focus on smaller sections of the lab rather than getting overwhelmed with the enormous amount of information I need to cover. Yesterday for example I spent three hours configuring the 3550. Starting from scratch, getting it all built up, then blowing away the config and doing it again and again until I was sick of the 3550. I just can’t see spending $75 at Proctor Labs to do this, it would be a waste.

Knowing that, I have tried to put together enough of the lab at my house that will allow me to study and practice in sections and save the Proctor Labs for when I want to spend 5 hours putting it all together.

VMware is an excellent alternative to having some MCS servers to run CCM, IPCC and Unity. Is it worth it to spend $10k on a vg248, probably not but I think it is worth it to buy a 2600XM from Ebay for $300 (+CUE, I found it for $500) and have the ability to practice CME, CUE and Gatekeeper as I need and not under the watchful clock of an online rack rental company.

CCIE Voice Home Lab Gear

I have found a mix of online rack rentals and home equipment to work well for me up to this point. Hopefully this strategy will pay off for me. 🙂