CCNA: List of Simulator Tool

Followings are CCNA simulator tool for practicing CCNA

Packet Tracer - Packet Tracer 5.0 is the latest version of Cisco Networking Academy’s comprehensive networking technology teaching and learning software. Innovative features of Packet Tracer 5.0, including powerful simulation, visualization, authoring, assessment, and collaboration capabilities, will help students and teachers collaborate, solve problems, and learn concepts in an engaging and dynamic social environment. Moreover, it's totally free! You can download this software but you need to register first or you can find a mirror download with google (with keyword "download packet tracer")

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SemSim - The free trial version (2.3MB) offers some CCNA exam router simulation labs & 20 flash cards

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Boson NetSim - Boson offers three certification-focused products, NetSim for CCENT 7.0, NetSim for CCNA 7.0 and NetSim for CCNP 7.0. The NetSim for CCNA 7.0 product contains CCNA-specific lab exercises that cover the skill set you will need to prepare for your CCNA exam. The demo version (21.58MB) is a good choice to get started.

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CertExams offers advanced network simulators including router / switch / terminal simulator. The simulators help in preparing for networking exams such as ccna or jncia. It would also be very helpful for those who want to get started with configuring Cisco or Juniper routers in a simulated environment. The demo version (6.95MB) is limited to:

- Six lab exercises

- Router simulator is limited to User EXEC, Previleged EXEC, and Global Configuration mode commands.

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RouterSim's CCNA Network Visualizer - You can design, build and configure your own network. The demo version is 44.49MB. It is ideal for:

- Anyone studying for the Cisco® CCNA™ 640-802 exam

- Deployment over a LAN network

- Distance education and deployment on a Citrix server or Microsoft Terminal Services

- Corporate trainers and employees

- Students at colleges, universities, and technical institutes

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How to Connect to a Network Printer in Windows XP

For most home users it is very easy to connect to a printer. Older printers are usually connected to the parallel port, while the new printers are connected to the USB port. Once the printer is connected and drivers loaded you can easily select the printer from the list and begin printing.

For those on a network that have printers you can use, you have to take different steps to connect to the printers. While the steps to connect to a network printer are different than connecting to a local print, they aren’t complex and can be performed very easily.

Network Printers

Unlike local printers, network printers are usually connected to a server somewhere on the network. Connecting printers in this manner allows many people to use the printers very easily without having to disconnect and reconnect the printer.

Any printer can be connected to the network, even printers used at home. Describing how to do that is beyond the scope of this post, but I’ll look into writing one in the future. To connect to a network printer you would need the name of the server connected to the printer, and the name of the printer. Once you have those two pieces of information you can connect to the printer.

Connecting to a Network Printer

To connect to a network printer, simply do the following:

1. Click Start->Settings->Printers and Faxes. This will display a window listing all printers currently setup on your computer.
2. Click the Add a printer icon to start the Add Printer Wizard.
3. On the first screen, click the Next button.
4. On the Local or Network Printer screen, select the A network printer, or a printer attached to another computer) option, and then click Next.
5. Since you know the server and printer name (hopefully), select the Connect to this printer (or to browser for a printer, select his option and click Next option.
6. Enter the server and printer name in the format: \\[server name]\[printer name]. For example, if your server name is printserv and your printer name is laserprinter, then the path would be \\printserv\laserprinter.
7. Once you enter the name, click Next to continue.
8. When a connection to the printer is established, and you have other printers currently installed, you will be prompted to set the new printer as the default printer. This means that when you click the print button in an application, this printer will be the one automatically selected first.
9. Select Yes to make the new printer the default, or No to keep the current default printer. When done, click Next to continue.
10. A summary of the newly added printer appears. When you are finished reading the information, click Finish to continue.

You have successfully installed a new network printer to your computer.

CCNA Lab Manual - A good book for beginner

Link download:
CCNA Lab Manual