Sometimes you want to test things, just to make sure you understand it, before you implement it in real life. But what if you don’t have access to routers.
Some years ago I was running dynamips and now ther is GNS3. Much easier to install.
Well, I got GNS3 running on my laptop, so that I allways (offline) can practise OSPF, BGP etc, etc.
http://www.gns3.net/