I know this isn't a new topic, but with the phasing out of equipment it's hard for me to determine what I do and don't need. Everybody wants to sell you a kit with a wide variety of equipment.

IT's very overwhelming. I would like to pick my fellow Spiceheads brain's to get your thoughts on what to buy. For starters, I'm looking to build a home lab for the CCNA, CCNP R&S, and expand it to CCNA Security and Voice down the road. I currently have on hand: 1 Cisco Catalyst 2960 POE 24 port Switch 1 Cisco 1941 Router Any information would be much appreciated.

Here some awesome articles on how to run Cisco Switch(CLI) on GNS3 Necessary downlaods IOU Virtual Vmware Image Cisco L2 and L3 Images for IOU The IOU Vmware zip file contains a full load of stuffs. You need only one. After that open the vmdk file in VirtualBox and do some little changes in settings. Install GNS 3, Practice Lab hands on with GNS 3 & Get your CCNA,CCNP Certification. Create vlan,vtp,stp on gnns3 by emulating IOS switch image. Learn how to upgrade cisco switch ios using tftp server in cisco packet tracer. Cisco switch ios upgradation tutorial for ccna students.

You can do all the routing stuff in GNS3 or UNL. I used 4 real switches for CCNP Switch, as the Cisco labs had a 4 switch lab setup in their lab book. I was able to do many of the CCNP level switch labs in Packet Tracer as well, so you can actually get pretty far using that for switching, just has a much more limited menu of commands. For routing, I did have some 1841's as well, and liked them because they are small and could still run IOS 15. I mainly used GNS3 for CCNP Route, but incorporated the real routers more in the TSHOOT studies. If you buy a router used, look for it to have an IOS 15 adventerprisek9 image on it so you can pretty much do any lab scenario. Mls67 wrote: Thank you all for the replys!

I downloaded GNS3 and will try that out--my home PC is pretty beefy and meets the recommended requirements so we'll see if it can run it. I've never heard of GNS3 before so I am excited to try that out.

My wife put the stop to buying the kit;-) so I am going to see if I can put a lab together at work. We are going through a refresh right now so I have to act quickly before they recycle all the Cisco stuff.

Edit: Does GNS3 come with everything I need or do I need a IOS image? You will need to find the IOS for your devices. GNS3 doesn't come with them for obvious licensing reasons. But it's very easy to find them online. You don't need latest and greatest. 12.4 should work just fine. Keep in mind that some ISO sub-realeases work better in GNS3 that others.

Adding checkbox in pdf using itext. I am using the following code to create a checkbox using iText, but I am unable to create on. Can someone help me with this. [code] PdfContentByte. The code seems to be from the FormCheckbox example that's part of the iText tutorial. I just compiled and ran that example, and it created a PDF file. I need to create a PDF Document using Java's iText libraries. I need to include as well some checkboxes, which are on/off depending on the value of some class variables.

Your best bet is go to GNS3 forum and look up ISO for CCNA or something similar. All the time you will put into setting up GNS3 will be very well worth it.

You will love it's flexibility. If an emulated device doesn't support a feature that yo9u wnat to test, then just add another device from the collection, browse to its respective OSI firmware and it's up. To get the GNS3 up and running on your PC, I found that the best way was to run it in the virtual environment.

Install the VMware Player, download the virtual machine with GNS3 (it's a Ubuntu VM, I believe) and run it as a completely isolated environment, without tampering with your computer setup. For some reason I stopped receiving 'reply' notifications from SW.

If you post any questions just spice up my reply so that I am notified. For R&S, all you need is GNS3. CCIE use it all the time. At least for the routing aspect.

Hell, Packet Tracer accomplishes most of the switching features - but it wouldn't hurt to pick up some very cheap L3 switches for the concepts Packet Tracer doesn't cover. I've seen some old 3750s in my area going for $30 or $40. Then you can incorporate those real switches into GNS3. Please don't start spending hundreds of dollars and wasting hours of your time on equipment.