Since passing my voice lab, I have had several requests from candidates asking to me provide a list of the equipment I used in my home lab. As I stated in earlier posts, during my V2 studies and due to not having a Catalyst 6500 w/ 6508, or a VG248 in my lab, I subsidized my study sessions with rack time from Proctor Labs. I would mostly do this during full mock lab sessions, and then utilize my own rack during everyday study.



With the V3 change (and a happy goodbye to our friends the 6500 and VG), it has made it somewhat cheaper (yet still pricey) for candidates to build their own voice racks. Since I work for a company implementing and supporting voice networks, I was fortunate to have the resources available to build a very nice and pretty much complete voice lab at work.

The following is a list of the gear I have in my lab which I used exclusively for my prep for the Voice V3 lab:

PSTN-WAN router
2811 ISR
VWIC2-2MFT-T1/E1
VWIC2-1MFT-T1/E1
HWIC-4T
PVDM2-16
PVDM2-64
3 Adtran External CSU/DSU
1 7960 IP Phone (PSTN phone)

HQ Router
2811 ISR
2 DSU/CSU T1 Fractional (V2)
VWIC2-1MFT-T1/E1
PVDM2-64
2 7961 IP Phones
1 7960 IP Phone

HQ Switch
Catalyst 3660-24

BR1 Router
2811 ISR (POE Power Supply)
DSU/CSU T1 Fractional (V2)
VWIC2-1MFT-T1/E1
NM-16ESW with Power daughter card for 16 port EtherSwitch NM
PVDM2-16
PVDM2-32
1 7961 Phone
1 7960 IP Phone
1 7941 IP Phone

Br2 Router
2811 ISR (POE Power Supply)
DSU/CSU T1 Fractional (V2)
HWIC-4ESW with 4-Port HWIC-ESW Power Daughter Card
VWIC2-1MFT-T1/E1
PVDM2-16
PVDM2-32
AIM-CUE
2 7961 IP Phones

All applications were run in Virtual Machines spread across two different servers (due to available resources)

I substituted the Catalyst 3750 with the Catalyst 3560. Both have the same command set and are almost identical with the exception of stacking that the 3750 provides. Also, instead of using the NME-CUE, I used the AIM-CUE, only differences being the number of supported ports and mailboxes being smaller on the AIM-CUE. You will also need to make sure that you have a few of the 41/61 (or above) IP Phones. This is needed for + Dialing support as well as certain SIP features (KPML for example).

James Key
CCIE #25772 (Voice)

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