Books and other learning material

[Crockett]

Hello fellow STH members,

I'm getting started next year with my networking degree and was wondering is there any learning material as in books and/or guides.
I was thinking to do CCNA before next school year begins.

Any recommendations for learning material i should definitely check out?

Little background over myself :

I am 20 years, living in The Netherlands.
Since i was 13 years old i've been interested in computers generally Unix/Linux systems.
At the moment i'm going to school to get my "computer repair technician" due several things i couldn't start with a networking degree.
But this year i'll graduate and following my heart to networking.

Basically what i have at home :

I have a small home lab with some older pc's stuff running :
2x Citrix Xenserver ( hosting teamspeak, various testing play grounds, local nas, and various other stuff )
I really love the command-line i've only used *BSD/Linux for server use and it gives me quite a boost in knowledge for networking/server projects i probably have to do at school.



Thanks alot guys !!

 

[azev]

I would recommend unetlab

 

[Crockett]

I would recommend unetlab

Thanks i'll definitely check it out

 

[whitey]

GNS3 may be good to check out as well. Get ready to burn some resources though.

 

[azev]

Other thing you want to checkout that is Cisco Official virtual lab is called VIRL
However its going to cost you $79 and limited to only 20 devices.
But even with 20 devices you can build CCIE lab when you're ready

unetlab is free but requires lots of works initially, and the only limit is your compute resource.
One other great thing about unetlab is that its that you can run almost all other vendor virtual/emulated hardware on it.