CCVP – Ghost Town!!!!!

pitviper

It's been awfully quiet on the CCVP boards of late. There must be more then like 5 of us studying!

Post which tests(s) you're currently studying for, and which materials you are using.

I took a well needed break for the holidays but hit the ground running last week. Currently working on CIPT2, using the Cisco Press book, CBT Nuggets older CIPT series, CCBootcamps IE Voice Technology WB (some good labs) and of course hands on lab time.

laidbackfreak

Yep I'm here, plugging away

Pretty much the same as you, but one step behind currently working on CIPT1, using the Cisco Press book, CBT Nuggets older CIPT series, and of course hands on lab time.
I have to say I'm enjoying this more than the CVoice lol.

How do you rate CCBootcamps IE Voice Technology WB??

I'm aiming to wrap it up by April should be doable plenty of exposure at work and home lab. As I've said else where I'm treating these exams as a fairly high level overview to get my certification. Once completed I'll go back over it and start hamering out the detail on some of my weaker areas. And hit the Labs hard.

pitviper

NICE! So there are more of us after all!!

laidbackfreak wrote: »

How do you rate CCBootcamps IE Voice Technology WB??

WB is really well written – It's got a real no BS, all "meat" kind of feel to it. Not good if you're new to the given topic, but I find it's a nice complement to practice/finish off a subject. Plus if you focus on the tasks and not just jump to the solutions it has a fun puzzle game type feel to it! WB is also broken up rather nicely into smaller labs so it's easy to pick and choose which ones meet the current objectives.

laidbackfreak wrote: »

I'm aiming to wrap it up by April should be doable plenty of exposure at work and home lab.

That's a pretty good pace!!! I've been going @ a 3-4 month rate per test of late. Should be done early summer.

laidbackfreak

cheers for the info, might well look at getting hold of that now

yeah I know the pace is tight, but I've been working on voice systems for 4 years on n off, not all high level but enough to give me some good exposure. As I said I'm shooting through the exams this year as a high level overview.
I should've taken cvoice before the change last year, but switched to ccnav before they clarified cvoice was good enough. The stuff I've seen on cipt1 is fairly straight forward so far and probably where most of my hands on lies. Hence why i'm enjoying it more lol
I would've wrapped it up last year but got distracted with cissp so that ate up all my study time.
Once I've knocked the exams out the way I'll go back to base and realll study the concepts inside out.

azaghul

Add one more to the CCVP pot.

Still working through CVOICE, started in July, but have dragged it out too long so back to the beginning tomorrow. In a perfect world would hope to have it passed by the end of February.

Using the Cisco Study Guide, CBT Nuggets for both CVOICE and GWGK as there is a lot of crossover and the home Lab.

laidbackfreak

azaghul wrote: »

CVOICE and GWGK as there is a lot of crossover and the home Lab.

Yep there is a lot of cross over with cvoice and gwgk, which I'm guessing is why they retired gwgk exam.

shodown

I'll be back at it as soon as I finish up my CCVP. My new job requires a CCNP which is funny because I will be moving to the voice and video shop soon, but until then CCNP it is. With all that said I have noticed learning the CCNP material has made me a better VOIP guy, but i"m sure it would be possible if I learned it the other way around.

pitviper

azaghul wrote: »

Still working through CVOICE, started in July, but have dragged it out too long so back to the beginning tomorrow. In a perfect world would hope to have it passed by the end of February.

I had a REAL hard time getting motivated for the CVOICE test. I started studying, then switched to the CCNA:V (pretty much as soon as it was announced), then back to CVOICE, got a little board, switched to (and passed) QoS, then finally knocked out CVOICE. Don’t fret though – the other subjects are much more “fun”!

laidbackfreak

pitviper wrote: »

I had a REAL hard time getting motivated for the CVOICE test. I started studying, then switched to the CCNA:V (pretty much as soon as it was announced), then back to CVOICE, got a little board, switched to (and passed) QoS, then finally knocked out CVOICE.

lol pit thats pretty much exactly what I did. I found CCNA-V much easier than CVoice after that tho.

azaghul

Hi Pit,

Passed the CCNA:V mid 2009. Found it very enjoyable. I think it was made easier that the same author (Jeremy Cioara) was involved in both the CBT Nuggets and the Study Guide. It's also a great lead-in to CVOICE, and having CME running makes it so much easier to test dial peers and voice routing. Without it CVOICE is too deep on theory and no immediate practical use.

CVOICE on the other hand seems so disjointed and badly written. The matching Nuggets do a barely adequate job as they are CVOICE5 with some extra videos. Thats why I tend to use a mix of the CVOICE and GWGK nuggets. I must admit to having fun setting up an Australian dial plan (a lot of research first) and starting to work through setting up a pseudo PSTN on my 2691. Using CUE to simulate the PSTN was an interesting exercise too.

Also have to get back into the workforce too. Being unemployed is no fun.

pitviper

Just 4 or us? Nobody else lurking that wants to join the madness?

networker050184

pitviper wrote: »

Just 4 or us? Nobody else lurking that wants to join the madness?

Nope, I still have nightmares of phantom "choppy" call complaints that can't be tracked down. I don't know why people automatically assume its their VoIP portion of the call that's breaking up, especially when they are talking to someone on a cell phone!

I might get back into voice eventually, but for now I'm enjoying my time away.

shodown

networker050184 wrote: »

Nope, I still have nightmares of phantom "choppy" call complaints that can't be tracked down. I don't know why people automatically assume its their VoIP portion of the call that's breaking up, especially when they are talking to someone on a cell phone!

I might get back into voice eventually, but for now I'm enjoying my time away.

What are you doing now in your time away from voip. I cant' stand being away from voip. I work on a very large global network now and it sucks.

networker050184

I work on the core network for a service provider and I absolutely love it. Before this I worked on a very large service provider VoIP network, and before that I did some time (yeah it was kind of like jail) at a wireless VoIP company. It was good experience that I'm glad I was able to get, but its too nit picky for me personally. I'd have to look into customer escalations that had been going on for weeks where they would have one damn static call every couple days, but they were so convinced it was the VoIP causing it. I think people just knew if they bitched enough we could never track it down they would get discounts.

shodown

networker050184 wrote: »

I work on the core network for a service provider and I absolutely love it. Before this I worked on a very large service provider VoIP network, and before that I did some time (yeah it was kind of like jail) at a wireless VoIP company. It was good experience that I'm glad I was able to get, but its too nit picky for me personally. I'd have to look into customer escalations that had been going on for weeks where they would have one damn static call every couple days, but they were so convinced it was the VoIP causing it. I think people just knew if they bitched enough we could never track it down they would get discounts.

Cool. I'm waiting on my chance to get back into voip. They are suppose to have some openings in the video and voip portion of our network soon. If so I will be making the jump. The pure networking kinda bore's me.