Throughout the years I feel that the website has fallen from grace and have moved away from the founding ideas of the website and more towards a hardware lab based workbook which requires you to buy a lab in order to complete the labs provided by the website. Looking back, I feel that this was a mistake that I made and I’m willing to fix going forward.

Several of the labs found in the new workbooks that will be published that will be published in near future cannot be completed on GNS3 however that does not mean that we will not support the ability to complete the majority of the labs on this website using GNS3.

With that being said, most voice and wireless labs cannot be completed using GNS3 and there are some labs in the security track that also cannot be completed using GNS3. At the beginning of those labs, it will be noted that real hardware is needed to complete those labs.

Also most labs found in the CCNA Routing & Switching Workbook relating to Catalyst Switching cannot be completed using GNS3 as it uses the NM-16ESW which has limited feature support.

Going forward with the development of the CCNA Security, Voice and Wireless Workbooks, I will provide GNS3 equivalent initial configurations and topologies to complete the labs that can be completed using the free software GNS3.

Each lab will include a link to give you the ability to download the GNS3 initial configurations for that respective lab and a link will be included to download all GNS3 initial configurations for each workbook.

I am clearly open to suggestions so please comment if you have any. This website was designed with you guys in mind and if there is any thing I can do to make your learning experience better please let me know.

Matthew George
CCIE #38216