Firewall.cx is always on the search for quality IT books that our readers can benefit from. Our Book Review section contains a wide range of hand-picked titles that are worth considering for your library. 

This section contains news related to popular IT Certifications and Study Guides. Readers will also find book reviews, certification exam updates, Discount coupons and much more.

The 'Cisco KnowledgeBase' section is one of the newest and most popular section on Firewall.cx. Dedicated to Cisco's leading technological inovations, this section offers articles covering multiple categories such Cisco Routers, Switches, Voice over IP and much more.

All articles are written by qualified engineers with years of experience and are complimented by our unique diagrams.

The quality of provided information is so high, readers can use it as a guideline for learning Cisco Technologies, but also for self-study exams.

We should note that Firewall.cx is only site, officially recommended by Cisco's Network Academy Program (see Site Related/Awards section), which confirms the validity of Firewall.cx and provided information.

Articles and examples provided in this section, cover the CCENT, CCNA, CCDA, CCNP & CCVP certification levels.

Note From Chris Partsenidis - Editor-in-Chief

Unfortunately, the Firewall.cx Free Cisco Lab project was placed on-hold back in 2007 due to the depletion of available funds and limited hands to continue the work.

While the first labs placed online showed an incredible response from the community with over 92% of available time slots (24/7) booked up to one month in advanced, looking forward into the future, we saw the uprising of lab simulations which were able to produce an identical environment for any engineer to work on and therefore decided to turn our attention and efforts to Firewall.cx's articles and provide new 'fresh' material for everyone.

For historical purposes, all documentation and labs produced for our Free Cisco Lab have remained on our site, confirming once again the innovation of Firewall.cx, in its effort to provide free education to its world-wide community.

The Firewall.cx Cisco lab is a project that started in November 2003. Its purpose, to create the world's first free, fully equipped Cisco lab and help the community learn and gain hands-on experience with Cisco equipment.

The investment made on this project is remarkable and next to none. Over $US10,000 has been spent on the lab equipment and various peripherals, aiming to provide the best possible simulations a lab can give. Hundreds of hours in research and development have been put in by our Team and other developers in order to enhance the labs and deliver an outstanding quality of service not found even on rented Cisco labs currently on the market.

Our lab is based on real Cisco equipment complemented by services such as ISDN simulators providing real ISDN calls between our routers, TFTP servers to allow you to save and restore your configurations and many more.

Each lab is split into two or more tutorials to gradually increase the experience and knowledge gained. The tutorials are carefully designed to focus on important details that might be required in the real world, while at the same time covering sections of Cisco's CCNA and CCNP certifications.

The equipment comprising our labs make it possible to cover up to the CCNP level of Cisco certifications.

The flexibility offered by our labs is equally impressive; you are not confined in any way, and are allowed to freely modify all equipment you have access to. This gives you the ability to create and test your own setups, to help you troubleshoot problems or test new designs which can then be applied in your real working environment.

We are confident the result will please our community and live up to the high-quality services we've been offering since the 2001.

Remember, we are always open to new ideas and suggestions so if you have any, please post them in our Cisco Lab forum.

To read more information about our labs, their setup and to view pictures of them, please select from one of the following pages:

This section covers the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol. We analyse the OSPF protocol, explaining why the OSPF protocol exists, how OSPF works, OSPF concepts, OSPF Areas, OSPF router roles and much more.

Our OSPF section has been designed to cover engineers who are new to OSPF (CCNA level) and progressively covers OSPF CCNP professional level. Our articles include examples of OSPF configuration for Cisco routers, ensuring a complete coverage of the OSPF protocol.

Additional OSPF articles will be progressively added as we continuously expand the OSPF section.