How much am I limiting myself with no VoIP?

So voice seems to be a bigger and bigger topic when it comes to jobs. Its almost every other cisco job has a mention of voip, whether it be basic call manager or full administration of it.

My current plan is to finish CCNP, do CCIP, then move onto CCIE R&S. This is obviously fairly long term, but I really had not planned to even touch call manager in any of it.

I am wondering if I am really limiting myself? Can you be strictly R&S 5 years from now, or is it going to be expected to have knowledge and experience with voice? And I am talking from an engineering perspective, not so much support.

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Comments

Paul Boz

I think it depends on the market you want to work in. Any time you intentionally don't learn something you're limiting yourself. I have zero interest in being a security specialist so not pursuing the security certifications limits that segment of the market but that's okay with me.

If I were you I'd at least spend some time familiarizing yourself with the general concepts. I can't set up a call manger but I can at least tell you the basics of a VoIP layout.

EdTheLad

I look at R&S as the starting point,once you have a good grasp on the basics i.e. routing and switching its time to move to bigger and better things like SP and Voice.You can be R&S 5 years from now but you will be limiting yourself.

GT-Rob

Well I mean VoIP is touched on in R&S and I do know the concepts. But my work right now has a specific Voice team, so I really don't ever touch it.

I mean if an employer wanted me to get it, or offered to train me I wouldn't pass it up. I just feel like focusing all my energy on R&S, to the point of being an expert.

I guess we will just see where life takes this boat.

networker050184

It is true that VoIP seems to be at least some part of every job now a days. I'm glad I had the chance to get some good VoIP experience while in the military. When I first sent my resume out to some recruiters I got a bunch of calls about Callmanager instalation contracts. Not exactly what I wanted to do but if I couldn't find anything else at least I have something to fall back on.

If I were you I'd just get a book on VoIP and read it when you get tired of the R&S stuff. That way you can at least know what people are talking about.

mgeorge

I'm sure in 5 years their will be loads of new technology related to voice

You give it 10 years QoS may not even be needed when you have 10Gig to a desktop
and 100Gig or more between distro's. What would a measley 96k packet be?
Of course I may eat my words in 10 years but oh well

Look at the Nexus 7000, able to run 512 10Gig ports ^_^ Wonder how long it will be
before Cisco puts out a new switch to replace the 6500's that has a 15Tbps switching
fabric like the Nexus 7000 OR MORE, able to span 100's of 10Gig links and a few
100Gbps links etc...

Any who, I'm day dreaming again

Mrock4

GT-Rob wrote:

Well I mean VoIP is touched on in R&S and I do know the concepts. But my work right now has a specific Voice team, so I really don't ever touch it.

I mean if an employer wanted me to get it, or offered to train me I wouldn't pass it up. I just feel like focusing all my energy on R&S, to the point of being an expert.

I guess we will just see where life takes this boat.

There's always room for specialists. If R&S is your thing, and you want to know every bit of it, you'll be fine. If you don't learn R&S too much in depth, then you might want to branch out to other areas..more of a jack of all trades approach than specializing.