Buying is the only way to go. I am in for about $4000 and I have 7 routers, a 5000 and a ISDN simulator. Look at EBAY and watch the auctions to see what stuff is going for. Be careful about how much flash and if the bootroms will support more memory. You need 16meg flash 16 meg ram and 12.1 IOS with support for DLSW IPX ISIS and such. With your home lab you can go downstairs for a couple of hours at a time most of the lab sites sell blocks of 8 or 12 hours for and if you don't use it all whats the sense. I recommend the labs for access to expensive stuff like ATM and VOIP but I would save that until the end of my studies after I can configure everything in record time. Get some labs from CCBootcamp or such and practice away. I heard you need about 750 hours of practice time for a fighting chance. I set my lab up about 2 months ago and I probabaly have over 100 hours on my lab. I have a long way to go every night you see something new. For people that have families like me I can only devote a couple hours a night a some weekend time before the wifey needs help or something. For me the home lab makes sense because I am not forced to work on the rack if something comes up last minute. The CCIE is not a cheap thing to obtain I have allocated 12-15k to get it between equiment, rack time, boot camps, books, and travel to the lab itself. hopefully after I pass my earning potential will increase 20-30% and the money will be well spent. If you think about it you are a business and you are selling your services so it makes good sense to invest in your business. Just my 2 cents.
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