CIPT1 up soon...what next?

negru_tudor

Hi there ladies and gents,

I'm over 60% through the CIPT1 material going by the Cisco Press book and Jeremy's nuggets and so far so good. Had initially planned on taking CIPT1 for sometime in May but at the rate at which my studies have gone so far I'm thinking of sitting this sometime mid-March (looking at the 13th..maybe earlier).

Seeing how CVOICE and CIPT1 studies have kind of drained me a little bit I was considering of tackling CAPPS as my third exam, leaving CIPT2 and TVOICE for last.

Any thoughts/suggestions/advice if doing things this way is a viable way of doing things?

Much obliged.

bobfromfpl

I would transition straight into CIPT2 to be honest since it builds off of CIPT1. By skipping CIPT2 and moving to CAPPS you may have to relearn a few things that are otherwise on the top of your head right now. The grind can be hard but keep at it, it makes completing the track that much more rewarding.

negru_tudor

bobfromfpl wrote: »

I would transition straight into CIPT2 to be honest since it builds off of CIPT1. By skipping CIPT2 and moving to CAPPS you may have to relearn a few things that are otherwise on the top of your head right now. The grind can be hard but keep at it, it makes completing the track that much more rewarding.

Thanks for this..might as well get on with it then..have been looking a bit deeper into the Transformation stuff and have stumbled upon (unknowingly!!) Localization and Globalization ... have been trying to grasp them concepts but lucky enough I found out that they're under CIPT2 so am now moving on to the Call Coverage section... CUCM does have a LOT of meat to it when it comes to dialplans...just when you thought you got down basic dialplan design (CSS, Partitions) ..boom..something like Globalization/Localization makes you humbly go back to your drawing board .. crazy, crazy stuff here

Alex90

At the rate you're going you might even get it done before they change up all the exams!

negru_tudor

Alex90 wrote: »

At the rate you're going you might even get it done before they change up all the exams!

Lol Thanks Alex. Well, I was initially looking at sitting down CIPT1 sometime in May but have had a bit of a quiet period at work so I just churned away at it...you'd be surprised how much the CCNA Voice stuff helped..If you got down the CUCM stuff when doing ICOMM, then the first half of CIPT1 is mostly recap..ICOMM was a lot of real useful info in a really compressed package! Kudos to them for doing it that way! CIPT1 builds upon it so nicely.

negru_tudor

So I managed to wrap-up my CIPT1 studies, did a recap and went through the lab practice exercises so have booked my exam for tomorrow (26th of Feb). Material used for studies:

- Cisco Press: Implementing Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Part1 (CIPT1) v8.0
- CIPT1 Foundation Learning Guide
- CBT Nuggets' CIPT1 video series
- the Cisco Support Forums
- anything I could get online about media resources (transcoders, mtps, etc)
- Home lab (VMware with 1xPUB and 1xSUB, GNS3, 1x2801 IOS 15 with E1 and FXS ports, 1x3550 PoE enabled and some CIPC vms along with some 7940s and 7960s, 1 x Nortel Opt11C lab system with a E1 PRI at work for simulating the PSTN)

I have to say that there's quite some meat to it but I expect CIPT2 to be the heavy-weight one (CIPT1 just mentioned Globalization and Localization and I had to look them up for 2-3 days to get my head around what they actually do to help out)..

Will post back after I've sat the exam tomorrow.

wgroom

Hello Negru, how was your CIPT1 exam?

negru_tudor

wgroom wrote: »

Hello Negru, how was your CIPT1 exam?

hey there managed to pass this one. material wasn't as tough as CVOICE but I had to read some of the questions several times as the wording on them was trickier than on the CVOICE one. All in all, I learned a lot and am looking forward to getting started with CIPT2; read some stuff on SAF and CCD today...man, pretty interesting stuff - extending EIGRP-like features to call-routing data I expect CIPT2 to be difficult and all but sure looks neat

shodown

don't wanna break your heart, but don't ready too much on SAF/CCD its going away soon.

negru_tudor

shodown wrote: »

don't wanna break your heart, but don't ready too much on SAF/CCD its going away soon.

Hey shodown,

Thanks for the heads up. Have seen this mentioned in several places, I have to say. Are they introducing something else that does the same thing?

shodown

They have already introduced ILS. So the need for SAF/CCD is not really needed unless you want to push out CME/SRST and have the ultimate redundancy solution. I only recommend this for people in the 10K and up seats where they have a lot of offices. I've only setup SAF/CCD 2 times and one customer was over 100K seats and the other was 10K and moving to 65K with a buyout they recently did. Overall it was a cool technology, but only for companies who could afford to have consultants or had there own army of geeks on staff, so 95 percent of companies would never use it.

negru_tudor

shodown wrote: »

They have already introduced ILS. So the need for SAF/CCD is not really needed unless you want to push out CME/SRST and have the ultimate redundancy solution. I only recommend this for people in the 10K and up seats where they have a lot of offices. I've only setup SAF/CCD 2 times and one customer was over 100K seats and the other was 10K and moving to 65K with a buyout they recently did. Overall it was a cool technology, but only for companies who could afford to have consultants or had there own army of geeks on staff, so 95 percent of companies would never use it.

I see..alas, I'll still need to read up on it to pass CIPT2 though On another note though, what would you suggest going for after CIPT2? CAPPS or TVOICE? I've seen that people have mixed feelings on the order in which these should/can be tackled..would going for TVOICE after CIPT2 be better or do CAPPS and leave TVOICE for last?

As always, all/any feedback is very much appreciated.

shodown

If I remember correctly TVOICE assumes so knowledge of the apps, so I would take the CAPPS exam first. They were both pretty easy as it took me about 4 years so get my CCNP Voice, so I had quite a few deployments under my belt before actually took the exams.

negru_tudor

shodown wrote: »

If I remember correctly TVOICE assumes so knowledge of the apps, so I would take the CAPPS exam first. They were both pretty easy as it took me about 4 years so get my CCNP Voice, so I had quite a few deployments under my belt before actually took the exams.

Thanks for this I know what you mean..it was the same for me in regards to Nortel/Avaya certs and ShoreTel..had several deployments and support time under my belt before going for certs..can't say I do too much Cisco VoIP at my workplace currently (although that's about to change soon enough) but I did a lot of research in putting together a voice home-lab and did several Cisco VGW installs for toll-bypass in between 3rd-party TDM PBX systems. CUCM kinda blew my mind when I did ICOMM but coming back to it on CIPT1 (and based on the experience I've gained since ICOMM) I must say I quite enjoy it - very powerful and flexible. CAPPS it is then IF and when I manage to get CIPT2 down! Thanks again!