Using ccierackrentals.com

Hey

Because I’m relocating my lab, I need to use a 3rd party rack rental provider for the time being. The prices are quite reasonable so to test them out i bought a single session only. I had some hiccups:

• they need you to have a paypal account on top of having a credit card.
• you need to turn on the rack and and the access server 5 minutes before your session. Remember to turn them off after your session as an etiquette thing.
• the password they sent me didn’t work so I had to raise a support ticket. the support guy was very helpful and only took like 5 minutes to reset the password
• The access server had some problems: the default names didn’t work (R1, R2, R3 etc.). Again I raised a support ticket and they guy said I need to use P10R1, P10R2 instead. I wonder why they didn’t include the other names in the welcome email. Anyways, I was able to work quite efficiently afterwards and completed a few labs.

I used:

• Raspberry Pi3 with Raspbian
• Remmina to RDP to their windows
• ssh to a custom port of the ccielabs dyndns address
• INE workbook
• my trusty prime plus to create a 3g hotspot because my work connection blocks ssh to a custom port

THe nice thing about their switches and routers is that on the flash they have loads of start topologies for the INE labs. Very handy.

All in all, 4/5 for the first session experience. I guess that next time I won’t be wasting so much time resolving those little problems (installing remmina, forgetting basic linux stuff, resetting password etc.)