If you want to get your hands dirty with real cisco gear in preperation for your CCNA you can use two cisco 2501 routers w/ a DTE/DCE cable (or two). With the routers configured back-to-back it will give you the proper equipment to practice the various skills needed to sucessfully navigate the CCNA.

A little additional background for those who aren't familiar with cisco gear...

The 2501 has two Serial Interfaces, One AUI interface, 1 Console, and 1 aux connection. (AUI = use an ethernet transceiver)

The 2500 series are kind of the old workhorse of the cisco world. The are an older series of routers than the newer products from cisco. The are a little slower and a little less max memory,etc. Don't let that scare you though...There are still TONS of them in production enviroments running like tanks The benifit of them being a bit older is they are inexpensive and available on ebay. Cisco's command line interface is the same on all the routers so as a student it won't be different worlds when you move from you lab to production environments somewhere.

When I bought my CCIE lab I spoke w/ Michael Beacom @ Optimum Data (http://www.optimumdata.com/) He is their "Build-your-own-lab" guru. He got me all set up with pretested equipment w/ a warranty for cheap. Michael know cisco and knows the in's and out's of cisco certification. He will make sure you get what you need.

I would also advise you to check arround on ebay for CCNA or 2501 and see what you come up with. This may be a cheaper route, but most times it won't come with a warranty and you don't really know who your dealing with.

Good Luck!

Tfunk