GNS3 - The Emulator to End All Simulators

While we're talking about building a home lab, let's talk about the cheapest home lab ever...That'd be FREE. A group of guys from France have put together a Cisco emulator known as GNS3. Notice I said, "emulator" rather than "simulator". This is the real deal guys...put together a network diagram and boot a REAL IOS in a PC-based lab environment.

Read more here.