I broke down and order the CCNA 640-802 Network Simulator from Amazon. It seems to be fairly extensive with 250 labs. Unfortunately the software won’t ship until next week. I would have liked to have purchased real hardware but I was not able to make decisions about what routers and switches I need.

I may still get the physical hardware at a later date but now the budget is about $100 smaller because I purchased the simulator.

The book reading is going ok. I still have ~450 pages left in my study guide.