Home Lab upgrades

Until recently, my home lab consisted of 3550 L3 switches I was using as routers, along with a few 2600 routers.

I procured some newer gear and here's my current set up. I'm running 6 2811 routers and a 1921. I'll post the logical topology shortly so you can see what I'm up to. 

I plan to tear out the 2600's and replace them with a few more 1921's and a 2900 for a DMVPN set up. That will completely fill my rack, so I think I'm good on gear acquisitions for the forseable future.

As for configuration, I'm emulating a client site with redundant routers, connected to a bgp cloud, with 2 wan edge routers on the other side emulating data center connections.

My lab has enabled me to build a network, from scratch, by hand. Since I'm a tactile learner, this physical lab has been a much better fit for me than using GNS. It also allows me to practice the concepts taught in Cisco's  CCNP track, which was the point in building this physical lab.

So that's my update. Newer gear and lots of it. I'll post my logical drawing of this set up, as well as my configs. I could have really used this info as I started on my journey, so I hope this can help someone out there just starting out with their home lab.

Thanks for stopping by,

Andy