"If you look carefully, you'll find it"

That's what many people said and actually it is true.

Since the preparation until I pass the written exam, I keep wondering on how may I afford to have home lab for CCIE lab exam?

I know the answer is out there somewhere, and surprisingly, I actually already have it long time ago even before I prepare for my CCIE seriously.

Around early this year, someone from mailing list posted an information that there is a Cisco simulator that is not like Boson network/ router simulator. This simulator can load the real Cisco IOS and run it as though it is on the real Cisco hardware, but it is inside a PC!!!

I always wonder on how to start making such a program. Because my logic just guided me many times: what you could do to program a hardware logic is possible to simulate it as software logic. It is juat a matter of how to understand the hardware logic works

Here I am now, just past midnight (an hour ago), sitting in front of my PC and still amazed on this full-blown CCIE lab that I can simulate at the comfort of my home

Somehow maybe I was fated to be what I am today with whatever I have.

I recently purchased a server, a REAL server, for replacing my old soon-to-be-dead-but-no-one-knows-when server.

This new server, logically, would be able to run around 12 instances of the router simulator. Many people that heard this was asking me what are the hardware specification, is it expensive, etc, etc ... I just smiled

The fact with this simulator is: even if it does nothing, it take 100% CPU resources. If we run 2 instances, per instance took 50% CPU resources each. When I run all 12 instances, it took around 16% CPU. Hang on a minute, isn't that supposed to be 8%??? Well, I have a processor in hyper-threading mode, that is the reason it could provide adequate and sensible response.

Plus, it still runs my internal mail server, web server, etc smoothly.

Maybe I will buy the 2nd processor and upgrade more memory into it. Or if the price for upgrade is very close, maybe I'll buy another server instead. We'll see later on then