We get this question a lot on Proprofs and I pondered it quite a bit as well when I began studying for my CCNA. For a Cisco newbie, trying to decide how to set up a decent study lab without going broke is a daunting task. In my opinion, the answer to whether or not to spring for hardware depends a lot on why you are studying for the exam to begin with, your intentions after passing the exam, and also your financial situation.
If you are a system administrator, for example, and your main reason for wanting a CCNA is so that you can communicate better with your network team or grasp basic networking concepts and you really don’t plan on pursuing future Cisco certifications, then I would probably say you should opt for a good netsim, like the Boson netsim. This would give you plenty of labs without investing in equipment and should be sufficient to pass the CCNA. I bought mine online from a discount book seller for about $89, far cheaper than the cost of setting up a hardware lab. If you intend on going further in Cisco, then things get a little murkier and I think more depends on your finances. If you plan on working in networking long term and you can manage the cost, I’d say spring for the equipment. Nothing beats the hands-on experience you get troubleshooting your own hardware to set up a lab. Hardware never works quite as “neatly” as a Sim, so you will get to experience first hand some of the issues a person in the field might encounter and you’ll become more familiar with cabling and managing the devices. You can find decent used hardware on ebay and build a lab for a few hundred dollars.
That’s great, but what if you are trying to break into networking, but you aren’t making a CCIE’s salary? Then I suggest the route I took, which was a combination of hardware and a sturdy Sim. You can get some good experience with the hardware by either borrowing or renting equipment for a short period of time. There are many companies that will rent you a lab of real equipment you can access remotely for a period of time. Some are even free. You can also take a week-long class that uses hardware and pair that experience with longer hours spent with a Sim. For me, this combination approach gave me some familiarity with the hardware as well as a sim that I didn’t have to troubleshoot and came loaded with dozens of labs to work through.
Either route you take, I’ve found that from most candidates I’ve spoken to, it’s the time you spend actually working in the IOS doing labs that really makes the difference between passing the exam(s) and failing. (That plus being able to subnet in your head, of course!) You just really have to feel comfortable with the commands and be able to quickly identify what you need to do in order to be able to meet that time limit. In the end, though, if you love networking, it can be a fun time!
