Voice Studies

Thanks for the reply Chris and Skepticals!

@ Skepticals,

I was just curious about the lab setup. I see here at work we have the following servers for our VoIP setup:

- Cisco VoIP Call Center
- Cisco Call Manager Subscriber
- Cisco Call Manager Publisher
- Cisco VoIP Voicemail

How do you setup a lab with these servers? These aren't exactly cheap software licenses. VoIP implementation can get extremely expensive. Did you create a lab for your CCNA Voice cert, or did you just read and take the exam?

I am starting to take a strong interest in voice now, being that VoIP is so popular. Not only is it popular, but it is very much needed in the enterprise.


Cheers,

ZiPPy

Here's my question

Licensing. Seeing how it’s going to be in a lab environment don’t we need a license? I use a CCO account setup by a customer of mine that gives me access to just about everything including copies of CME. Before I download a copy, I want to know how licensing works…

Or am I over reacting?

I had to learn on the job; so I didn't have to worry about that. I was handed the equipment and was told to figure it out!

I hate to hear that, but unfortunately its one of the best ways to learn.

But I am glad they don't use this method in medicine. Here is a patient, he is sick, figure it out. :lol:


ZiPPy

A former manager at work believed that the best way to teach someone was to throw them in the fire and let them struggle!

I've come to realize that there's just to much technology out there to learn beforehand. Add the speed of new technology development to management's rush to implement new solutions and you're almost guarenteed to come across a situation where you have to learn something new tonight and implement it tomorrow morning.

So skepticals...I take it that you used Cisco CCNA Voice material to learn the material for work and then afterwards you went on for the cert?

We recently deployed Asterisk at work because of it's lower cost, in comparison to Cisco's VoIP solution. Despite the cost difference, would you say that Cisco's VoIP solution is THE VoIP de facto at this time? I also see ads about 3CX, but haven't heard much about them elsewhere. I guess the answer to my question is the same as the answer regarding open-source (but inexpensive) solutions v.s. closed-source (but expensive) solutions.

To answer your question, it depends on how "Homebrew" you want your VoIP solution. I don’t consider Cisco’s equipment to be de facto, there’s to many other manufacturer out there each with their own way of implementing voice traffic and administrating the phones. You see Cisco implemented a lot because the core networks are already running on Cisco equipment.

I looked into Asterisk a while ago. It has grown rapidly in past few years as more people find out about it. The one nice thing about it is Cisco lets you download the required files to update their phones to work with Asterisk for free.

I have to look into 3CX a bit more. It looks like a Windows version of Asterisk. From the brief look at it, it looks pretty solid. I like the Training index. Thanks for bringing this to my attention..