2611 or 2621?

[june03]

My home lab consist of the following:

cisco 827--------Pix 501---------Catalyst 2900

I was looking at the following routers:
cisco 2611 w/ 1 T1 card
cisco 2621 w/ 1 T1 card

What i want my setup to be is:

cisco 827--------Pix 501---------cisco 2600-------Catalyst 2900

I want to be able to setup VLan's, the 2900 switch has 10/100 ports, but i know 2611 are only 10mb ports and the 2621 are 10/100. Though this is for studying purposes, should it matter what speed the ports are for my home
lab? I want to use the switch to setup multiple vlans and be able to route between vlans.

Im currently studying for my ccna and will be going onto my CCNP. The reason for the t1 card, is when im ready to built my ccnp lab, i will already have the router with a t1 card already setup. Though 2500's are cheaper, i do prefer the 2600. Which router would u guys prefer? june03

 

[wybnormal]

The magic word is here *trunking*.. the 10 half port on the 2611 will not trunk to the 2900 switch.. The 2621 on the other hand has the required 10/100 port for trunking. With that said, this is the official party line of the testing.. but, I have heard that the 2611 10 port CAN do 802.1q trunking with the correct IOS.. but the reality is in the real world, I can not think of many times you would want to trunk vlan traffic over a 10Mbps link.

The T1 card is pricy but I would recommend a serial card or even better a dual serial port card. The reason is you can pick up one more 2500 or even a 1600 series router with a serial port and practice your frame/serial configs. I attempted to draw an ideal lab

pix----2600----29000
|
2500 dual serial as frame switch
|
1600

This layout gives alot of flexiblity for practicing frame, routing, vlans etc

MikeS
Find me at

http://www.packetattack.com

"The trouble with giving up civil rights is that you never get them back"

 

[june03]

thank you for your advice. I will be purchasing a used router via ebay. june03