[mikester]

Hey? What's the old stuff? I might be interested in some of it for my Lab if it is what I need.

Also - being one of those irritating engineers (I know I irritate the techs I work with at times) - using old gear is fine - having old gear on hand is absolutely a must - especially if you have old gear in production still. The idea however is not to have too much - just enough to get by in a real emergency.

Our company likes to 'sweat the assets' - we're typically at least a 5 year refresh cycle. Sometimes more if we can get away with it. This is fine so long as the gear is reliable and Cisco stuff is typically - code may be a little buggy but the hardware is usually reliable. SOME 'end of sale' stuff has actually just reached its 'non-buggy' maturity. In otherwords the code is now stable but the hardware's been replaced. They may have put it in an 'end of sale' status but support is usually still for 3 years or so - PIX firewalls have been end of sale for some time but some of the higher end models I think may still be supported (515s, 525s and 535s).

Again - I may be interested in the stuff if it is reasonable and what I need for my lab - I'm studying for my CCIE (scheduled August 26th) and while I have a lab at work - if I can get some gear at home I like that too.