I dug out my CCNA lab this afternoon to get it setup over the weekend. I was happy to discover that I still had both my ‘console panel’ and, the serial cables! I was worried that I had tossed all of the cables out earlier this year. I can be impulsive when I clean and it’s not uncommon for me to absent mindedly toss out things I mean to keep. The little 12U rack I ordered should be here on Monday. I think what I am going to do is mount it underneath the desk. This floor is tile with adhesive carpet tiles on top. If I undermount the cage, I can keep from damaging anything.

As far as power goes, either side of the office is fed from a different leg so, three devices per leg. I have a couple of long corded power strips I can use to where I need it to go. I know, I know… I can hear the cringetards already losing their mind over the use of power strips. I hear you, I am doing it anyway. I know where all the power in this house is routed and what is connected where so… whatever.

While I am on the subject of power, I am on the hunt for a couple of ‘smart’ power strips. We have the big rack mounted RPDUs at work that are capable of spitting out all sorts of good info… just like the information I am looking to collect from this little project I am working on. I checked in the orange and blue ‘big box’ hardware stores near me and didn’t see anything like that. So, I might have to dig around a bit to find them. It would be cool to see what a tool like Grafana might see.

I have the lab server setup as well. Ubuntu, Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP, Python and Perl. I also installed a copy of Visual Studio. I went out looking for a decent editor and somebody suggested VS in a reddit. I have never used it and it’s free so, what the heck! Oh, I am planning on installing Netbox on it as well. I have a little experience with it at work on a lab machine and I’m kinda digging it. It has opened the door to a lot of ‘wouldn’t it be cool if’ statements and a whole lot of ‘what if’ to accompany.

Sooo, about those lab devices. Looks like I need a refresher on ROMMON mode.

Password:
Password:
Password:
% Password: timeout expired!
% Bad passwords

….

S2 con0 is now available

Press RETURN to get started.

That’s great….

Here is what I am thinking. I have a whole mess of things that I want to try. I am not even going to try list them all in a single setting but, with all the ideas bouncing around in my head, a ‘real-time’ lab would be a nice have. So, between my old CCNA lab, a tacklebox full of raspberry pi’s, a box of cable, some heads and crimpers, I am pretty sure I can come up with something! I ordered a small 12U rack from Amazon earlier. It won’t be here for another week so, that will give me time to work out a topology and bang out enough cables to make it work. My only concern now are the serial cards I have in the routers. I did a lot of clean up last spring which included some old pc parts, extra cables, whatever… Anyway, I am not completely sure but, I may have tossed out the serial cables for these cards. If I did, it will come down to ordering dual t1 cards or new serial cables…. whichever is cheaper.

-Jiggs