sundance-communications.com/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX VoIP & Cloud Phones, Hosted PBX, General IP Phones Where to start?

Don't shoot guys, but I am interested in learning about the Cisco phones and becoming certified. I know just enough about networking to be dangerous so, I would need to start at the beginning. What would be step one in the process? I've looked over the Cisco website and so far all I'm seeing is an onslaught of acronyms. I guess what I'm looking for is an order to do the training/certifications. When I try to decipher the website and look at the prerequisites, I seem to be going in circles trying to figure out where to start.

I've read through all the opinions on whether to VOIP or not, but I'm not quite as salty as some of you guys and have quite a few more years before I can hang up my tool belt. I can see the writing on the wall, like it or not, it's coming. I'm already seeing quite a bit of it around here even in our small market. Most of it is by bigger companies flying in people to install it with the customer left needing someone local who who can bail them out when/if things go wrong. They are going to have to pay somebody for help, I see no reason that guy could not be me. Even if I have to tell them "Yep it sucks alright", at least that would be a "Certified" opinion. I can't see myself selling a pure VOIP system any time in the near future, but I do see the need to start the learning process.

I'm not a VoIP guy, but you may want to start with the Cisco CCNA exam(s). There's an option to take 2 exams or one integrated exam. The material would give you some fundementals in routing/IP addressing and cisco routing technology in general. I'm not sure how much of this is relevant to VoIP, though I would imagine you'd need at least some routing knowledge to trouble-shoot routing issues if necessary.

An overview of the Cisco exams can be found here:

https://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/learning_certification_overview.html

The do offer a voice-related certification path which is probably what you'd look at.

I am in the same boat, I have a lot of years ahead of me before I get to call it quits, as much as I tried to avoid it I am seeing more and more of call mangers popping up, so as much as I hate to face it I will need to learn thsi as well. I have thought about looking into the CCNA exam, but am curious if Cisco offers a certification just on their voip systems.

Our employees have found it easier to take the two courses and tests(Intro and ICND), rather than the one exam to aquire their CCNA.

The website shows they have specialist programs, which may be a good place to start.

https://www.cisco.com/web/learning/...certification_type_home_extra_level.html

https://www.cisco.com/web/learning/...certification_type_home_extra_level.html

I'll second Steve's suggestion. Once you've written your CCNA, you'll have an account for www.certmanager.net With this account you can view all the career and certification paths, and see exactly which exams you have written and still need to write to get your certs.

If you start with CCNA, that will be the first of 6 exams you will need to write for the CCVP cert. No matter which certs you decide to go for, it all starts with CCNA.

my experience with voip says: if you're gonna do voip, you absolutely have to know networking really well. vast majority (99%?) of our "voip problems" have been network issues. fix the network, problem goes away.

it's worth knowing.

Johnyreb, if you'd like, I can send you the CCNA study notes I wrote when I originally took the CCNA exam. This will give you a good idea about the basics the exam will cover.

I took the exam over 5 years ago, so by no means are the notes up-to-date, but I'm sure most of the concepts still apply.

I have been considering taking the integrated exam again, as my original certification has expired some time ago.

Thanks guys, I really appreciate the information. I'm checking into these guys for pricing on the CCNA training/test and the eventually the CCVP. Anyone have any experience with them?

{added} Steve we must have been typing at the same time, thanks for the offer, it is very generous of you, but let me look into things a little further and I may take you up on that. At least I have a direction to start looking now. My biggest thing is I want to get the most training for the buck, I don't want to spend this much money and have them talking over my head all week long. I feel confident I can learn the material, but just wanted to make sure the courses start at the novice level. Also, will they issue me the pocket protector or do I need to provide that?

No pocket protector required. Of course if you get to the CCIE level you can probably afford one in solid gold.

You can always just read the books and do practice exams to prep for the tests, though this takes a considerable amount of time. I did it that way, but I had already done the same for the MCSE exams, so I was used to it by then. It is an inexpensive way to go, however.

There are plenty of certification web sites, including: https://www.brainbuzz.com/. Might be worth a look.