This has to be one of the worst hundred bucks I've ever spent. Thank goodness my employer reimbursed me for it. Things that suck:

1) you're limited to soo few network devices not a huge deal but why? It's kinda lame

2) The amount of supported commands and features are far too small. I was able to do basic routing protocols, but even with those the commands were very limited. I was unable to do NAT which really disturbed me. Everything I WANT to do, I cant do because this software doesn't support the features. This is decent at best for the first half of the CCNA course where you only cover the basic basic routing protocols, anywhere past that this is completely useless.

3) There's more but this software isn't worth my time to spell it all out.

Dont waste your money on this, seriously I'm very disappointed.

Took this test this morning. I went through EVERY lab in this simulator and read through the Sybex book a total of three times before taking my test. I was confident in my answers until I got to the simulation questions. ALL...not one...ALL of my simulations were on NAT. Out of all 11 chapters in this simulator, not one of them went over configuring NAT. Not only was I surprised...I was a little upset because of the money spent to be confident in nothing. I went through the website for the upgrade to RouterSim 4.1 thinking maybe that's what I should have done before I took the test..and that too has NO labs for NAT.

Please don't get me wrong. I learned a lot from these simulators and am not completely upset about the purchase, I just assumed that the labs covered by this simulator went over basically EVERY situation the test covers. My fault for assuming...fool my once right? So...just a heads up for whom ever plans on using this tool for a test they will be taking soon...use this in conjunction with another simulator..and pay attention to NAT....it was a pretty HUGE portion of my test!

I purchased this product brand new and was only able to use one of the two licenses supportedly available with it. Then I was able to log-on only once and was locked out with an authorization error. I have repeatedly attempted to contact this company, it appears they are not supportive of their product. The one time I did get into the program it seemed to be vague and very simplistic with prompts for upgrade purchases. To avoid an unnecessary headache, save your money and do not buy this product.

This is the first product of this kind that I searched for and purchased. One good thing is that you can load already built networks and configure them. And it was ok that you could drag, drop, and build your own. After working with it for a while I discovered it had a maximum number of routers, switches, and hosts you can use. You can have a maximum of 3 routers, 4 switches, and 6 hosts. However, when I got deeper into my studies I needed to work with more equipment but you are limited here. I searched around again for a better package and realized that I could upgrade at routersim to the network visualizer program. I wish I would have purchased that first. There are no limits to the equipment you can use to create a network, plus, that program seems to support a lot more commands that match the new cisco curriculum.

As a Cisco Academy student I bought this with the intent to supplement the lab activities and to do labs when lab time was not available. As another reviewer noted, the first thing it asks is if you want to upgrade. I am finishing the second half of the CCNA 1&2 book and this was a help with some of the early labs. As we got further I noted commands missing and not enough hardware can be set up to do the labs. I found the access-list command not working which blew away any ACL labs and practice. It just isn't worth the money for a serious student. I am upgraging to Router Sims NetVis 4.0 (actually the same engine this one uses, this is a scaled down version that Sybex resells). It has all the Cisco Academy semester 2 labs and looks like it covers all the commands. Appears to be a much more comprehensive simulator for about 80 bucks more. See the comparison at their web page.

This will give you a feel for router configs, but has too many limitations to be more than just a toy. If you are serious about CCNA lab and practice, you will find this lacking very quickly.