Building a Cisco lab environment
It's very important to get a lot of hands-on practice when pursuing a technical Cisco certification. You can do this by labbing up everything, whereby you practice by putting everything you've learned for the certification in practice labs along the way.
In the following sections, you will learn about the various methods of building a Cisco environment using both virtual and physical equipment.
Cisco Packet Tracer
You may be wondering, what is Cisco Packet Tracer? Years ago, Cisco Systems created their own online learning platform using a variety of e-learning and collaboration tools for some of their certification programs. In doing so, they also created a very lightweight network simulator tool that allows users to build, design, and troubleshoot a Cisco enterprise network. Its purpose is to allow students to sharpen their skillset while learning and preparing for the CCNA certification.
Just a few years ago, the Cisco Networking...
