My suggestion is to have a mix of these routers so you get exposure to different models that you can see in the real world. Below you will find a table with the memory requirements to run Advanced IP Services and CCP on a router for both IOS 12 and 15. Otherwise you will find out that you can’t run both as you don’t have enough memory. You are also going to want to make sure the 1841 routers are 256/64, the 2801 routers are 384/128 and the 2811 routers are 512/128 so you can run the proper IOS and CCP. These routers will support the 15.1 Advanced IP Services feature set which supports zone-based firewalls and IPS.
The most economical choice is the 1841 or the 2800 series routers. So what routers will work? You will need a ISR (Integrated Services Router) model router. The 210-260 exam has dropped CCP, but it has put higher demands on the version of IOS required (IOS 15) and the need for more capability in your command sets.
Since much of the 640-554 exam covers CCP, none of the above routers are really a viable option. But now since it does not support CCP, it is no longer relevant. This is a change from the older version of the CCNA Security exam as the 2600XM series used to be fine since it supported SDM. The second issue is that they do not support CCP. Although they can cover some of the CLI topics, the first issue is that they do not support zone-based firewalls or IPS.
Many students assume that the older 2500, 2600 or even some of the 2600XM 12.4 series routers which support IP/FW/IDS Plus or IPSEC 3DES will do the job. In building your CCNA Security lab, the first thing you need to consider is picking up a router that can support the IOS with the feature set to cover the exam objectives. Premium CCNA Security Lab Kit we use three routers, three switches, and an ASA.
The lab kits we offer for CCNA Security uses three routers and the same number of switches. How Many Routers for my CCNA Security 210-260 Lab? We are now back to remembering all the syntax and using the CLI interface again. With the latest CCNA Security 210-260 exam, Cisco has moved on and dropped CCP. So get very comfortable with CCP! All that said, if you made it this far in your Cisco career, I think you will find the CCP GUI interface quite easy to use compared to remembering all the levels and syntax of the CLI interface. Next, the CCNA Security 640-554 exam covers many topics only from a CCP perspective. First and foremost, the new 640-554 CCNA Security exam has replaced SDM(Security Device Manager) with CCP (Cisco Configuration Professional) and it also has less emphasis on the CLI(Command Line Interface). We should probably open up by covering some of the differences between the previous CCNA Security 640-553 and the CCNA Security 640-554 exam. So without further ado, lets start to figure out the best way to build our CCNA Security Lab. There have been some major changes to the 210-260 Security lab environment from the old CCNA Security exam. In this article, we will cover the hardware you will need to build your own CCNA Security 210-260 lab.