CYBEREVOLUTION

In all my years working with Cisco kit, I have always been rather dissappointed by the lack of a decent AND affordable alternative to owning your own lab equipment, especially in this increasingly wireless and security conscious age! Now perhaps I have struck upon my Nirvana?

NetworkSims

They bost an emulation environment that not only simulates routers and switches, but also PIX/ASA firewalls and Aironet Wireless devices! Crucial to many of the current Cisco qualification tracks out today. Sounds expensive doesn’t it!! Even the premium personal download, includes two licenses allowing you to not only install it on your main PC, but on your laptop too for when you are on the road?! AND all for the price of…. wait for it! $48 which equates to about £26…

So, what’s the catch?? So far as I can see - there doesn’t appear to be one, other than the software license only lasts a year, by which time the technology is out of date anyway. So, in the small chance you still require it after a year, you’d have to buy another copy - and why wouldn’t you at this price? The only other limitation I can see is that it doesn’t allow you to build custom environments and experiment to your hearts content; hmmmmm maybe I expect too much?

Limitations asside it comes with enough lab/challenge scenario’s to keep you occupied for hours. I have not played with it fully yet, but as soon as I have got my teeth around it, I may post a further review on it here.

There’s certainly a lot of positive ‘SPIN’ in the feedback section of their website, so I’ll give it a look and provide an objective view as someone who has worked on both the provider (WAN) and client (LAN/WAN) side in telecoms.

Of course, if you begrudge even spending this little amount go check this out:- Dynamips it’s freeware and allows you to run real Cisco IOS Emulations for the 7200, and 3600 series on your Linux or Windows PC!!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.