How to use your Practice-Lab

When you access a course module a small window will appear on the right hand side of the web page (show here on the right). This window is called the Practice-Lab application and can be turned on and off using the lab icon at the top right of the web page.

This particular screenshot shows a Cisco Routing a switching lab shown by the title at the top of the lab application window. With Router 1 is powered on (small blue play icon), Router 2 is currently selected, Switch 1 is powered off (red cross icon) and the server at the end is being processed (possibly being powered on or off, show by the orange exclamation mark).

Next are the lab devices with small icons above them, a grey panel below them and between the grey panel and the device icons is an orange selection pointer. Starting from the top these icons are as follows:

• The status icon of the device, shows whether the device is off, working on an action or on. When on, the device is connectable, in all other states you will not be able to connect to the device.
• The device icons. These icons serve as selectors to the controls, for example if you want to power on a device called Router 1 then you will need to click the Router 1 icon and use the controls that are displayed in the grey panel to power the router on. You can hover over the devices to find which device is Router 1 if it's not obvious.
• The orange arrow shows the currently selected device. This arrow will move if you hover over a device too, but once you move your mouse pointer away the selector will move back to the currently active device.
• Finally the first grey panel that is automatically expanded is the device information and controlls panel. This panel gives you a little more information about the device that is currently selected, such as operating system, device state etc. There is more information about the controls in the controlling section above.
• The Window size function are to do with the size of the screen you wish to launch the device in. Some devices are more appropriate smaller, some larger, als if you have a restricted screen size on your own PC or MAC you may wish to opt for a smaller screen size to launch the device so that you can see the whole window once the device launches.
• Auto-Logon is usefull when you are testing user accounts on Windows or other devices. Sometimes you may want to use logon details that you have created on a device or in Active Directory for example. Auto-Logon has no relevance for Cisco devices.
• A Lab diagram can be found as a link in the Additional tools and information window along with this help link.
• More information about the sharing section can be found in the sharing section above.

Software requirements

Practice-Labs works in all modern browsers, it is always recommended that you keep your browser up to date.

To configure your browser correctly, you must have the following set:

• popups must be enabled from *.practice-labs.com check now!
• Sun Java must be installed and enabled (minimum version should be 1.6*) check now!

*Some Java version have known issues in some browsers so it's recommended to get this updated at the Sun Java website

Messages that you may see

• You will need to accept and download any Java applets that try and launch from www.practice-labs.com and labs.practice-labs.com sites, these are safe and will cause no harm to your computer
• You may recieve a java certificate security warning when you access a lab device, you can safely tick the accept check box and click yes to continue when this happens

Below are some common messages that you may see

Hover your mouse over the image to expand it, if you want the image to stay expanded, you can click on the image so that it will stick. To collapse the image again once it is stuck, you can simply click on the image.

Browser popup warning, this image is taken from Internet Explorer, each browser shows it's popup warning slightly differently so your popup warning may not look the same as this:

Java security warning, when you launch a device, 2 java controls may need to be installed, these are safe and can be downloaded. Once they are installed you may receive this Java security warning, because of the way Practice-Labs works we are unable to remove this warning so you can simply select the highlighted checkbox and press yes:

Cisco controls, when you launch a device for the first time on your desktop computer you may be prompted to install a Cisco Java control, this is safe to install (it may look slightly different from this image depending on your operating system version).

Controlling your lab devices

The first thing you will need to do is power on your device. Often, not all devices will need to be powered on so follow the instructions within the exercise closely.

There will be a black rectangle with an orange border (exactly how this text looks) at the beginning of each exercise stating which devices will require powering up for that particular exercise.

The power control icons are as follows:

To power on a device, click this icon. When you power on a device you will see the other icons for this device will become greyed out and the connect button will display "please wait". When the device is powered up the connect button will be displayed. Please note that it can take a few minutes to power on a device so please be patient!
To connect a device, click this icon. This button will only become active when the device is in a connectable state (i.e. powered on). Devices will be launched from the black popup window, please make sure that popups are enabled from the labs.practice-labs.com website
To power off a device, click this icon. Please note that powering off a device will ERASE it's configuration
To reset a device, click this icon. If you make a mistake on the device and want to start a fresh, use this icon.
To reboot a device, click this icon. This icon reboots the device, in the same way that selecting Start, restart from the Windows start menu. The advantage of using this icon over the operating systems reboot is that this will monitor when the device comes back up. Otherwise if you use the Windows restart, then you will have to estimate when the device comes back on (or you could ping the device to find out when it comes back up, however this does not tell you when the Terminal Services service is ready for connections.
To suspend a device, click this icon. Suspend is not available for some devices, suspend is usefull when you want to shutdown a device (take it off the network), BUT not clear it's configuration.

Corporate environments

Some corporate environments may require additional configuration to enable succesfull connectivity to a Practice-Lab device.

The attached guide below details the requirements for corporate networks, please pass this document to your IT networking or security team for review.

corporate connection guide

Lab sharing

Lab sharing is a way for someone else to assist you, or for you to assist someone else in some activity.

Each party in the share currently must have access to a lab to be able to see the other users labs.

The screenshot to the right shows the lab panel that appears when you are accessing the lab. The Additional tools and information panel has been expanded to show the lab sharing feature.

Sharing your lab

The drop down boxed labelled Lab Sharing shows you a list of users that are currently online. To send a share to someone you can click the add icon, once you click the icon you will see their name appear under the You are sharing with: heading. To remove the share simply click the red cross image next to the name.

To refresh the user list you can click the green refresh icon next to the lab sharing drop down list box.

To see someone elses lab

If someone has shared their lab with you, this wont automatically appear in the lab panel. You will need to click the green refresh icon next to the lab sharing drop down list box. This will refresh the entire status of the lab panel including users online and users who are sharing their lab with you.