I'm taking a week-long Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices at Interface  in Phoenix.

This is Pod 1.

                                                 

I'm taking the class for two reasons - it's a prereq for a Windows Admin class that I also need to take, and to learn more about TCP/IP (especially subnetting).

I had no idea that there would be actual hardware in this class. Hardware is something that I have always been decently shielded from; it's always been in some other room, somewhere, freezingly air-conditioned, where other people run around with bundles of cabling and connectors and suchlike devices.

But in this class, it is not only openly-displayed, but we're suppose to put our hands on it and do things.

Pod 1 is, well, a training pod - it has a shared switch, and four paris of switches and routers - one pair for each of us. (That bit thing on top, underneath the shared switch, is a router that all of the pods share - since this is Pod 1, that's a convenient place to put it).

This morning, we cabled from our PCs to the shared switch, and then from the shared switch to a wall jack - this allows us to maintain Internet connexctivity while we're getting our switches and routers configured. Then we ran cabling from our serial ports to the consoles on our individual switches, and connected our switches to our routers and our routers to the shared switch.

Very Soon Now we'll unplug our  PCs from the shared switch, and then we'll be separated from the Internet until we can get our switches and routers configured. (This would be a scary thing, were it not for the fact that I've got my laptop under my desk - I'm a WiFi away from my email).

Looking at that pic, from the bottom, you'll see two switch/router pairs - since i'm Student 3 on Pod 1, I'm the second one up (Students 1 & 2 are on the other side, and Student 4 is just below me). See all those cables and wires and whatnots? Yep, plugged 'em all in myself, this morning - and the wires weren't even color-coded.

This is all a lot of fun, and I do hope to learn more TCP/IP, but I have a funny feeling that the hands-on network admin stuff will fade away from non-use; before long, I'll forget the difference between Cat-5 and Cat-5E and between Berkeley and MIT straight-through wire configs in the cables.

In fact, I'd say that the above prediction is certain. I've already forgotten the Berkeley/MIT thingy, and Cat 5 sounds like a prime-numbered feline....Lunch time!