No more hiding in the server room

Is a Cisco 2501 router still useful for a CCNA lab?

I've got an ancient 2501 router sitting in a box next to me. I have no idea what IOS is on it, although I'd suspect it was 12.2. I wonder as I look at it "is it even worth the space it's taking up?"

You can rescue it from my dumpster if you can convince me it's worth it.

Tags: ccna, certification, cisco, lab

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Permalink Reply by Isaac on September 25, 2010 at 2:37am

This is just my opinion of course, but most of what you'd be interesting in learning off a Cisco router would have to with routing protocols. On a 2501 you're going to only have a couple of serial ports so that's going to complicate connectivity to other devices significantly. Plus that's going to be a pretty old version of IOS, so it's useful for learning in a general sense, but it's going to be quite out of date wrt features and syntax.

Really there's a lot of more relevant & up to date hardware out there on eBay or whatever so I'd just let it go. I mean unless you want to keep it for old times. I've got a closet of old hardware I keep around for the memories.

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Permalink Reply by Wesley "Nonapeptide" on September 25, 2010 at 3:21am

Yeah, that's what I figured. I'm trying to live minimalistically nowadays anyway. I like the concept of "100 things". I think this one is going to slip into the trash for the big sleep...

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Permalink Reply by ANISHKUMAR ACHARI on October 1, 2010 at 1:22am

For ccna labs ... 2500 series is sufficient .... it will allow all the features required for the exam ...But if u want to go for ccnp .. then u need have a higher series router....