I started full scale labs with the IPX vol 3 labs 1 – 4. I am roughly following Ed and Zay’s recommendation, which is to do IPX vol 3 labs before INE vol 2 labs and then lastly do IPX vol 2. This is because the IPX vol3 is actually just IPX vol1 labs 26 – 30 branded as IPX vol3. Therefore they fit like a glove after completing IPX vol 1:
IPX v3 Lab 1: If you are preparing for the new version 4 RS lab, this lab will be perfect for the new RS blueprint. This is a real easy lab, so get it done early in preparation. For the SP labs it is a good warm up.
IPX v3 Lab 2 – 4: Labs get progressively harder. While lab 1 took 4 hours to complete, lab 4 took 10+ to thoroughly work through.
IPX v3 Lab 5: I skipped this lab according to the recommendation. I will do this lab somewhere at the end. Therefore I can not yet comment on this lab.
Overall labs 1 – 4 are good intermediate labs. I definitely agree with Zay and Ed that these are the labs to start with when moving over to full scale labs. Most of the sections could be done on dynamips, except for things like turning off DTP and switchport security. I have not felt a real need for real switches during these labs. Lab 4 has a qinq scenario linked to a l2tpv3 tunnel that I could not quite do but worked around the qinq limitation by configuring a trunk and l2tp tunnels for each vlan.
I hope to do all the labs at least twice before September, but on the second run I will probably skip lab 1. Not much of a review, hope to add some meaningful insights in round 2
