From: Brad Hedlund (BHedlund@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Date: Tue Feb 29 2000 - 13:22:30 GMT-3
This is exaclty why I still buy my books at something called a "book store".
You can actually look through the book before you buy it at these book
stores.
I found the 'Configuring Cisco VoIP' book and deciced not to buy it after
looking through it.
It was great. I saved alot of money. Had I found the book online I might
have been tempted to buy it, and would have been very dissapointed.
For those of you looking for VoIP and QOS information ... dont forget about
the Documentation CD.
It has everything!
Regards,
Brad Hedlund
CCIE #5530
Network Guidance Co.
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Wagner [mailto:Richard.Wagner@mitchell.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 9:30 AM
To: 'ccielab@groupstudy.com'
Subject: RE: Voice over IP . how much?
Hello All,
I got the book Jason mentioned (Configuring Cisco VoIP, Syngress) and a book
called "Cisco Packetized Voice & Data Integration" Caputo/McGraw-Hill, isbn
0-07-134777-1. I've read both and *highly* recommend the Caputo book over
the Syngress book.
The Caputo book is much much much better for those of us looking to satisfy
Cisco's voice requirements on the CCIE lab. I make that statement from
seeing the voice in my last lab attempt. It is written for people with
strong lan/wan knowledge and weak phone/pbx knowledge. You get lessons on
how the phone in your house evolved, how it turned digital, and how the
routers move that digital data. QoS is a big component of VoIP and it is
covered well. A natural addition to the CCIE lab will be QoS for IP,
especially now that voice is covered.
For us geek CCIE wannabes :), getting hands-on for voice will be difficult
(just like ATM). I'm confident that being book-smart with this book (and
the minor experience gained from my lab attempt) will get me through.
Good luck to all!
Richard Wagner
(read on if you want to know about the Syngress book)
OK, since I wasted $40+ on the Syngress book, here comes the flame... (my
personal negative opinion/review)
The Syngress book, in my opinion, sucks. It's only strong points are that
it covers H.323 and the "pbx on a net" ideas using Call Manager (the other
book doesn't touch it). There are many errors, crap is cut/pasted in, the
tables are missing information, and the tables' data conflicts with the
paragraphs accompanying them. (example: the paragraph states "Cisco
supports all five types of E&M ports", the adjacent table correctly states
that type IV is not supported).
It was great to get fuzzy ideas on H.323 and network-PBX... the rest of the
data has constant flaws and I eventually didn't trust the information to be
complete or correct. The author doesn't have CCNP, CCDP or CCIE
certifications and it shows... kind of like hiring an MCSE that doesn't have
experience yet. The "technical editor" CCIE obviously didn't do his job
well when a non-technical proofreader would easily catch many of the errors.
The IP addresses don't match up in the labs. The loopbacks on different
routers are in the same IP subnet while using the loopbacks for unnumbered
serial interfaces. Why add the unnecessary complexity?
Additionally, over 20% of the book (over 100 pages) is dedicated to
appendices for IPv6. This is a lot of unnecessary padding in a book called
"CONFIGURING Cisco VoIP" I have yet to see a VoIP command use anything but
ipv4:, dns:, ras, or loopback: for targets. Without giving an opinion on
the importance of IPv6, it should be in a book with the word "IPv6" in the
title. Additional padding comes in ROI studies and future projections for
the technology. You'd be better off scrounging the 'net and doing your own
cut/paste study guide.
I'd see this as a great opportunity to make my own book on this subject, but
Caputo has this one well covered! Give this book to your semi-technical
manager for a better chance to see VoIP in your real-world future.
Ok, I'm done, I will breathe now :)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Thu Jun 13 2002 - 08:22:54 GMT-3