Voice worth doing for DC ISP work?

Hello.

I currently work in a corporate ISP. SIP makes up a large portion of our tickets and I've recently been approved to have the software to troubleshoot SIP calls. It would be tracing calls, providing diverts and interpreting pcaps among a few other things. A big higher up is SIP provisioning.

The old Enterprise Voice looked great but Cisco recently got rid of that, correct? With the surface of voice troubleshooting that I'm about to get into, would it even be worth studying for the CCNA Voice, or just get good at the troubleshooting aspect of it (Studying the protocols etc).

Kai.

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shodown

While cisco VoIP uses the protocols, the exams very application specific, so you won't get as much value from it unless you are using a cisco platform. There are some specific SIP certifications out there, that may provide more bang for the buck.

Magic Johnson

Hi shodown can you point me in the right direction of those SIP certs please?

shodown

SIP Training and SSCA Certification -

negru_tudor

shodown wrote: »

SIP Training and SSCA Certification -

Yeap, one of the best around ...endorsed by a lot of vendors (Avaya, ShoreTel, AudioCodes, 3CX etc). Can't go wrong with it...am considering doing this myself after getting done with the CCNP Voice track.

Magic Johnson

Nice one, will definitely be more useful than the CCNA Voice for me. Cheers.

Magic Johnson

Well I've requested it through work, it is all online (including the exam) so can be done at your own pace. You also get 3 retries if you fail. It's about £300 for the training and the exam and is endorsed by a big telecoms firm that we are the biggest customer of so I reckon they'll pay to put me through it.

Didn't realise it was UK based as well, so thanks very much for the heads up shodown.

Kai123

Magic Johnson wrote: »

Well I've requested it through work, it is all online (including the exam) so can be done at your own pace. You also get 3 retries if you fail. It's about £300 for the training and the exam and is endorsed by a big telecoms firm that we are the biggest customer of so I reckon they'll pay to put me through it.

Didn't realise it was UK based as well, so thanks very much for the heads up shodown.

Thats really useful to know.

I might get my job to let me go through the training, we have to sign up not to leave within 2 years if the company pays up, but honestly that will help me get a position that they have trouble being stable (NOC shift hours).

Thanks for keeping us updated

Magic Johnson

I've had no reply yet haha. Our company do a staggered thing, as in the first 6 months it's 100% of the costs, 12 months 50% then they calculate it between the next 12 months depending when (if) you leave.

£300 isn't too bad but I think they have that policy for when they put people through courses worth £5,000+.

mgmguy1

This looks like a very good certification to have. I recently interviewed with a company and they asked me if I had any SIP or PBX experience. While In my work history I have only had limited voice/VOIP experance,this looks like a good certification to have. I am going to show this to some friends of mine who are looking to move in thier jobs. We all work in Telecommunications just in different areas and companies

Magic Johnson

Ok so my boss seems to think it would be a waste of time because we already know about SIP (which is true to a small extent) but nowhere near the level of detail this course goes in to. Its annoying because we only do hosted voice solutions 99% of the time over our CPE and network which is always configured correctly. His argument is if there are any issues they will be troubleshot (troubleshooted...troubleshat? LOL) by the phone system provider (this is also true to an extent) as we have no SBC visibility. However their support is getting worse and it takes them ages to do anything over and above the simple stuff. Getting them on a port mirror analysis is almost a waste of time.

So he suggested WCNA instead. I want to do both, but unfortunately the WCNA is £250ish and so is the SSCA (not including the study materials!). I don't think they'll put me through both, and the most likely is the wireshark cert, which is no bad thing but I really wanted to know SIP inside out (given my job title is voice engineer!).

I'll report back for anyone interested as to how good or bad the course is if it gets the green light. Cheers.