GUIDES MEET PRACTICE
Clear networking guides and 68 CCNA browser labs. Learn the concepts, practice IOS-style commands, and check your work as you go.
One lab free. No account, installation, or hardware needed.
A browser simulation of selected IOS behavior. It does not run an IOS image.
EXPLORE THE LIBRARY
Models, addresses, and the basics that connect everything.
↗ 02Switching & VLANsBuild and troubleshoot Layer 2 networks.
↗ 03RoutingUnderstand forwarding decisions and paths.
↗ 04Security & accessExplore controls, authentication, and firewalls.
↗ 05WirelessFrom WLAN fundamentals to controller operations.
↗ 06Linux & toolsDiagnose and verify from the command line.
↗FREE FIELD REFERENCES
A free PingLabz account unlocks the Linux, ASA, BGP, and OSPF PDFs. Choose the guide you need and keep it close while you practice.
GO FURTHER WITH PRO
Pro unlocks 60 build labs, six troubleshooting labs, and the campus Mega Lab. Follow guided exercises, try IOS-style commands, and check your configuration as you go.
SELECTED READING
Keep learning
One real IOS XE change through a fully open source workflow: intent in NetBox, a Batfish check, an Ansible push, the Oxidized commit, then Loki, Zabbix and Akvorado all seeing it. With versions and honest limits.
I loaded my home lab into NetBox 4.7, used it as the live Ansible inventory, and pushed interface descriptions to IOS XE: check mode, apply, an idempotent re-run, and Oxidized recording the change.
Batfish models IOS XE configs offline. It caught a shadowed ACL line and a static route that null-routed a LAN before deployment, and it is honest about the 23 lines it couldn't parse.
Oxidized 0.37 pulls IOS XE router and switch configs into Git on a schedule. A real change, the diff that caught a mistake in it, what remove_secret hides, and the limits worth knowing.
pmacct's nfacctd turns Cisco IOS XE NetFlow into per-minute CSV files and a SQLite table you can query. Config, schema gotcha, real output and a cross-check against Akvorado.
Port scans and ping sweeps vanish in bandwidth graphs. Counting distinct ports and hosts per source in Akvorado and ClickHouse finds them fast. Real queries and output from two IOS XE routers.
Akvorado and GoFlow2 + Loki fed the same NetFlow v9 from Cisco IOS XE: totals that match to the byte, 2.4 GiB vs 146 MiB of RAM, storage, LogQL vs SQL, and where the lighter stack runs out. Built in my home lab.
Find the host hogging a WAN link with NetFlow v9 from Cisco IOS XE and Akvorado: boundary filters, Sankey, path drill-down, the double-counting trap, the router flow cache and a ClickHouse query. Built in my home lab.
Feed NetFlow v9 from Cisco IOS XE into Akvorado v2026.10.1: SNMPv3 interface enrichment, classifiers, Sankey, top talkers, and the ClickHouse AVX2 crash with its fix. Built in my home lab.
How I redesigned a busy Grafana NOC dashboard for a wall screen: big solid tiles, colour that means action, thick lines, filtered Zabbix problems and flat availability bars, with honest notes on what didn't work.
One Grafana NOC dashboard mixing Zabbix problems, Prometheus SNMP and blackbox metrics and Loki syslog for Cisco IOS XE and Linux, including a real SNMPv3 fault both tools caught.
SNMP says the router is fine; can users reach anything? Use the Prometheus blackbox exporter for ICMP, SSH banner and HTTP probes against Cisco IOS XE and Linux, with the relabeling explained and a Grafana dashboard that catches a real outage.