A Cisco Router Lab is a hands-on practice environment for learning, configuring, and troubleshooting Cisco networks from the foundational CCNA level all the way to the expert CCIE level.
This hands-on lab combines the strict priority queuing covered in an earlier QoS lab with the CBWFQ bandwidth guarantees from the previous lab into a single Low Latency Queuing policy, verifying voice traffic receives immediate priority service while data classes still receive their guaranteed minimum shares.
This hands-on lab enables NBAR2 protocol discovery on a router interface, identifying application-layer traffic by signature rather than port number alone, then uses that classification directly within a QoS policy-map to prioritize a specific application.
This hands-on lab configures MACsec on a switch-to-switch link to encrypt all Layer 2 traffic crossing it, verifying frames are genuinely encrypted in transit and that a mismatched key prevents the link from passing traffic at all.
This hands-on lab configures the SGT Exchange Protocol (SXP) between two switches, allowing SGT-to-IP mapping information to reach a device that lacks the hardware capability to carry SGT tags inline, extending the SGT-based segmentation covered in an earlier lab across non-SGT-capable infrastructure.
This hands-on lab configures a switch to dynamically download its SGT name-to-number mappings from the ISE-equivalent policy server via Environment Data Download, verifying the switch stays synchronized with centrally managed SGT definitions without requiring local per-device configuration of every group name.
This hands-on lab configures two physical switches into a single logical StackWise Virtual switch using a dedicated Stackwise Virtual Link, verifying both members present as one control plane and that a member failure triggers predictable failover behavior.
This hands-on lab configures traditional Catalyst stacking (StackWise) across three switches using stack cables, contrasting its single-tier, chassis-proximity requirement against the StackWise Virtual pair covered in the previous lab, which allows switches to be located much farther apart.
This hands-on lab performs an In-Service Software Upgrade across a StackWise stack, upgrading each member's IOS image one at a time while the stack continues forwarding traffic throughout, verifying zero downtime compared to the disruptive reload approach used in earlier IOS upgrade labs.
This hands-on lab configures Remote SPAN (RSPAN) using a dedicated RSPAN VLAN carried across a trunk, allowing traffic mirrored on one switch to be monitored by a capture device connected to an entirely different switch, extending the local SPAN concept covered in an earlier lab across the network.
This hands-on lab configures Encapsulated RSPAN (ERSPAN) to mirror traffic across a Layer 3-routed network rather than a single Layer 2 trunk, extending the RSPAN concept from the previous lab beyond the boundaries of a single VLAN or switched domain.
This hands-on lab reconfigures a classic EIGRP setup into EIGRP named mode, organizing address-family and interface-specific configuration into a more structured hierarchy, and verifies functional equivalence with the classic configuration style used throughout earlier EIGRP labs in this series.
This hands-on lab configures a branch router as an EIGRP stub, verifying it advertises only its own connected and summary routes while the hub router correctly avoids querying the stub during a topology change elsewhere in the network.
