Which guide are you using for your CCNA preparation? I will compare the famous book by Mr. Todd Lammle with Mr. Richard Deal. Everyone suggests Todd lammle for sure and I think it depends how far one can absolutely love it. I did not like it as much as everyone else.

Well here are the things you should know about Todd's guide:

1.He talks about stuff you might have never heard of, yet he promises to tell you about it later in the book  and he tells that in a friendly way, this is frustrating.
2.The book covers over and above CCNA objectives, its good in a way but if our priority is becoming CCNA, those extra topics would kill your time.
3.His style of teaching is OK but not so good on few topics, actually waste of time and energy.
4.For configurations the book rocks, thats for sure. He uses a topology throughout the guide and implements different configurations like RIP, Eigrp, OSPF, interface configurations, IOS etc etc.
5.The book doesn't cover wireless topic effectively, you might get 3 or 4 questions from wireless in the test.
6.Whats beyond CCNA in this book: CNA for switches, IP telephone configs etc. If you've decided to use Todd Lammle's book, its very important to check his website for updates - www.lammle.com

What about Mr. Richard Deal's guide for CCNA?

1.The book is not so famous as Todd's but absolutely rocks!!!
2.You'd just read it like a story, yet the guide does not use informal way of explaining.
3.This guide is near to perfection, starts from the very basics of what a "network" is. So if you're completely new to networking, you will definitely appreciate this guide.
4.There are "Exam Watch" notes in between and they're direct questions from CCNA.
5.You complete a chapter, complete the "inside exam" section and take the "two minute drill"and then take the test, you will nail the subject and will not forget.
6.Configurations are not as good as Todd's but definitely NOT bad.

What now?
If you're confused which one to go for, go for Richard Deal, you won't regret it and if you have enough time you can through the configurations from Todd's guide. Like, after you're done with RIP, EIGRP, you take a look at the configuration section in Todd's guide. But this is redundant cos your labs are already covered in Richard's guide. And use GNS3 for your lab practice.

If you want to do a mixed study from both guides, you might wanna study these topics from Richard's guide for sure to be on safe side:

• Layer 2 Technologies (all about cables and layer 2 protocols)
• VLANs and Trunks(dot1q, ISL, EtherChannel etc)
• Switches and Redundancy (STP, PVSTP+, RSTP etc)
• WAN - Frame Relay, VPN
• IPV6
• NAT
• Wireless

Reminding again, the 'Exam Watch' notes in Richard's guide are answers to direct questions from CCNA.
And for the rest Todd's guide did pretty good including:

• OSI Model but take a look at Richard's on Data Link Layer (LLC and MAC) 
• Subnetting, VLSM, troubleshooting TCP/IP
• IOS and SDM
• Managing Cisco Internetwork 
• IP Routing - RIP, EIGRP, OSPF
• Security 

How to install MS loopback Adapter:

• Open Control Panel, double click 'Add Hardware'
• In the 'Welcome to add hardware' wizard, click 'next', choose 'install the hardware that i manually select from a list(Advanced)' and then 'next'
• In the 'Common Hardware Types' list choose 'Network Adapters' and then 'next'
• Select 'microsoft' in the 'Manufacturer' section and 'microsoft loop back adapter' in the 'Network Adapter' section and then 'next' and 'next'

Open your GNS3 with administrative privilege i.e. right click on it and 'run as administrator'

• Add a router and a cloud or a computer (computer symbol if you have configured its type as cloud)
• Rt. click on cloud/computer symbol, 'configure,' in the 'Node Configurator' window select appropriate cloud in the left column (C0). In the 'NIO Ethernet' tab, 'Generic Ethernet NIO(require administrator access)' select 'MS Loopback Adapter' in the drop down list and click 'Add', Apply, OK.
  
• Now in the GNS3 window, connect router's fastethernet(f0/0) to the computer/cloud's interface which is our loop back interface.
  
• Start the router, console it and enter commands as shown in the below picture.

• Change the speed to 10mbps using 'speed 10' command cos MS loopback adapter network type is 'ethernet' which is 10mbps. Thats how it worked me.

 Now lets go to - Control Panel->Network Sharing center->(left column) Manage Network Connections.

• Rt. click on your MS loop back adapter, select properties.
• Select - internet protocol version 4(TCP/IPv4), and then properties.
• Fill in the details as show in fig.

Verification:

• ping your router ( 10.0.0.1) from windows command prompt.

• ping your loopback adapter ( 10.0.0.2) from GNS3 router.

• OR you also could check mac addresses by 'show arp' in command prompt and router console.

P.S. I "disabled my firewall" totally, this is "Must" OR you could also change your firewall rules to accept ICMP requests instead of disabling it totally.
Making this work wasn't easy but I finally found the solution and it worked, you should be able to get this to work too.

Of all the features of gns3 the one i like is to be able to include my real PC in the topology I created. Lets see how we can do this:

Prereq: You have to run gns3 as Administrator for this. How? type 'gns3' in the windows start menu bar, right click on the 'gns3' program, and then 'Run as administrator.'

• Now drag your router in the main window, right click on it start it, then right click choose console. keep it like that.
• In the gns3 main window, click edit, symbol manager, from 'availabe symbols' select computer and click on the '>' the right arrow button. Now on the top right of the symbol manager type name as 'computer' and SELECT TYPE AS 'CLOUD' from the drop down list, then click OK. you should see this computer symbol in the left panel of gns3 main window.
• Drag that computer into the work space, right click on it, choose configure, select 'c0'( this may be c1 or c2 .... ) under the clouds section.
• OK now you should see bunch of tabs, first one is 'NIO ethernet'. In this tab, under "Generic ethernet NIO.. bla bla" choose your network adapter and then click on ADD, Apply, OK.
  

Note: If you have only one network adapter you're fine. But if you have more than one like on my laptop( wireless and lan) you wanna make sure you chose the one that is active.

OK now your router and your real PC is in the picture, lets connect them and test communication:

• In the router console lets configure any of the fastethernet ports first.

1. router>enable
2. router#configure terminal
3. router(config)#interface fastethernet 0/0
4. router(config-if)#no shutdown
5. router(config-if)#ip address 192.168.1.222 255.255.255.0
   
6. NOTE:choose an ip address that would be in the same network as your pc. ex: my pc has 192.168.1.105

Alright, the ethernet is interface is ready on the router and the active network adapter on your pc is ready, now we need a ethernet cable to connect these two.

• click on 'add a link' button on the top front panel, choose manual.
• Now click on the router, it displays a list availabe interfaces, we've configured fastethernet 0/0 so lets choose f0/0.
• Click on the computer, it will show the only availabe interface which is your network adaptor. so, choose that and we are done with connecting the router to your real pc.

Lets check if the connection is working:

• In the command prompt
  
• C:\>ping 192.168.1.222
  
  Pinging 192.168.1.222 with 32 bytes of data:
  Reply from 192.168.1.222: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=255
  Reply from 192.168.1.222: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=255
  Reply from 192.168.1.222: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=255
  Reply from 192.168.1.222: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=255
  
  Ping statistics for 192.168.1.222:
  Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
  Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
  Minimum = 2ms, Maximum = 63ms, Average = 22ms
  
  
• In the telnet console of your router do the same
  
• Router#ping 192.168.1.105
  
  Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 192.168.1.105, timeout is 2 seconds:
  !!!!!
  Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 4/21/40 ms
  Router#

OK... so that shows we achieved what we wanted! Have fun.

Hello people,

why look around for a pirated packet tracer. download the gns3 all in one, it is very beautiful and works like a charm in Vista. All your CCNA lab practice, building complex topologies and experiments can be done in GNS3 with drag and drop features. GNS3 works with a real cisco IOS image, so you get to practice each and every possible command.

Prereqs:

• ->First get a Cisco IOS image file from any of your friends who own a cisco router.

Install Telnet client:

• ->Open control panel/Programs/programs and feature OR just type "appwiz.cpl" in the RUN window and hit enter, that will open the 'programs and features' window
• ->In this window, on the left panel click on 'Turn windows features on or off'
• ->That will open 'windows features' window, in that tick mark the 'telnet client' and then click OK. It'll take some time to install the telnet client. Done with telnet client.

Now lets make sure if your telnet client is working: (courtesy: www.thundernews.com)

• ->open command prompt.
• ->type "telnet news.thundernews.com 119", hit enter, if you see 'welcome or connected' your telnet client is working.
• -> If that didn't work you can try with these different port no.'s instead of 119, they are 119, 7000, 8000, 9000, 23, 25, 80, or 3128.

Now the stage is set, lets move on to installing GNS3:

1. Download the gns3 all in one here
2. Click on the downloaded file and run it (installation)
   
3. I'd suggest to choose 4 options in the "components to install"
4. After installation, type 'gns3' in windows start menu bar, click on it, opens gns3
5. You get two options, click on 1
6. In the window provide a working directory path, then click on 'test' button, you should see 'dynamips successfully started', then click apply and then ok.
   
7. Now click on button 2, you'll get "IOS images and Hypervisors" window, in 'image file' section provide the path to Cisco IOS image on your computer. Then click OK and then apply. Depending on the IOS version, the platform and model fields gets automatically populated. Take note of the model. we're done.

Now we're at the GNS3 main window, lets make use of it.

• Now, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open 'windows task manager' and minimise it.
• In the left panel you can see all kinds of network devices. Drag a router model which your IOS supports, right click on it, click start.
• From the 'windows task manager' you'll notice that your CPU usage goes upto 60% or even more. To fix this, right click on your router, click 'idle pc', let it calculate a value, choose any one from the list with '*' mark, see if your CPU usage drops down to somewhere around 10%, if not repeat this until it drops and dont forget to be patient for it is possible!
• After that, right click on your router, choose 'console', that opens a telnet session to your router. This is as good as telnetting any real router so now you can use what you learned or do whatever.