I bought the Boson Network Simulator as part of my CCNA preparation. I’m stating up front – this review is coming from someone just starting on their way toward CCNA and doing it on my own. No boot camp, no college courses, just several months of almost two hours a day of personal study and my personal investment in materials.

This is what I noticed about the Boson Network Simulator – I was planning on buying rack time on real equipment but figured a simulator would be good to start out with. Plus, I needed some lab exercises to follow and thought this might be a good source of material.

At first glance, honestly, it’s a little odd. The main screen for the Boson Lab Navigator has the list of lab exercises. Stand-Alone Labs, Sequential Labs and Scenario Labs, looks like a lot of good labs. The right side and most of the screen real estate is taken up by a video player. I was thinking – Cool, video instruction with the labs. Not so much. It’s one video for the product demonstration video. One video, how to load a lab (double click on a lab) and a brief tutorial about the interface and moving around. And that’s the end of the video instruction. Fine, when I bought the Boson Lab Simulator, no mention of videos was made, no big deal, only it’s a lot of real estate I see every day that is a waste of space.

I do like the ability to use your own telnet program to use instead being tied to the simulator interface. There isn’t anything wrong with the simulator interface, but I like having multiple windows open for different equipment instead of using one windows for everything. Just my personal preference. It took awhile to get the default telnet program to work (putty.exe), but it started working and no problems since.

How technically accurate are the labs on the Boson Network Simulator? I have no idea. I’m not going to critique the technical aspects of whether certain labs are right or not. I assumed the program was going to prepare you to take the simulator portion of the CCNA exam.  Maybe it’s just me, but except for a few fill in the blank questions on the labs, the lab exercises were just follow this script and watch what happens. Following a script may help at first, but at some point I don’t need to be told how to do >hostname Router1 and go into configuration mode by entering configure terminal. Any moron can read a script. I’m sure I learned something from this, but it was mainly what the responses look like, not how to perform a certain action on my own with no guidance, without a script telling me exactly what to type.

I understand using a word for word script at the beginning, but after doing the first dozen or so, you can stop telling me I need to enable, configure terminal and hostname router. There is no thinking for yourself, if you want to learn how to follow a script, these lab exercises are for you. Even the “Scenario Labs” were disappointing. With a title like Scenario, you would think you would be given a scenario and be able to complete the mission and be graded on it. Nope, more script following.  Do the commands exactly like they say and you’ll be fine. I’m no education expert, but I really don’t think that is going to translate to being able to be tested on the material without a script to follow.

After spending a lot of money on this, I was and still am fairly pissed. I was expecting a learning environment. Teach me a task, then let me do it on my own, grade me on it and correct my mistakes. After going through most of these labs, more than once, I’m sure I learned something, but the entire Boson Network Simulator was a big disappointment.

UPDATE: Version 9 is awesome. Ignore this review because version 9 was completely overhauled.

Be Sociable, Share!