Building a home lab

Minimum home lab is a must . It can help to me to control the schedule not as a tight one as in a rental lab. The recommendation of Himawan Nugroho, CCIE #8171 is 5 routers and 1 switch. The cheapest router is 2610 which can run IOS firewall natively and can be booted with Enterprise software ( for 2600 XM series ) with the trick ( from Himawan blog ). Buy a 2522 or 2523 as FR switch including WIC-1T modules and V35 back-to-back cables obviously, also a 2511 as a terminal server. Cisco 3550 is expensive and can be replaced with 2950 which can not run routing and layer 3 features. Need a PIX either with smallest version 506 or FrankenPIX .
Im thinking about the prices that would be no more than $2000 bugs on the eBay. It's a hard work. How can I get it!.

With GNS3 v0.5 , these nodes can be emulated but need to verify. There's no doubt about renting a lab to practice VPN with ASA, IDS, IPS. -- Remember passing writing test does not meaning anything.