ccna voice without lab?

ToddB

if I have a strong voice background is it possible to study for the CCNA Voice without equipment and understand it?

tomaifauchai

Yes.
You need GNS3 and a IOS who support Call manager express (Unified communication express). (For the Small business path 640-460) (IIUC Exam)

And you also need a softphone which can run multiple instance (IP BLUE) and support Cisco.

You need to be aware of the Cisco UC-500 and how to setup it and also some Unity express modules and how to setup it.

I've followed the course at college, but it was lacking some knowledge about UC500 and Unity, so i bought the Boson ex-sim max and passed with 887.

mikej412

Which CCNA:Voice option are you looking at?

After Feb 28, 2011, there is only one option for the CCNA:Voice, the ICOMM exam. The lab requirements for that are far different than the requirements for the current IIUC exam (or the CVOICE option to earn the CCNA:Voice).

chmorin

I'd say no. If you manage to get certified on equipment you have not touched, I'm inclined to say "You're doing it wrong".

As mentioned before, you at least want to be dealing with the IOS environment if not the actual devices. GNS3 is a good bet, as you can run CME in it and get softphone phone calls and dialpeers working. It was a bunch of fun, if you ask me. Personally I ended up buying physical equipment, but I use the stuff frequently so it was worth it.

Also as Mike mentioned, there are currently three ways to get your CCNA:V. If you want alot of study for enterprise issues, and a small amount of labbing for gatekeepers and small QoS (I think) then you can go for the CVOICE exam. If you want to study for small business issues, and a medium amount of labing for CME, Gateways, and UC-500, then you could go for the IIUC exam.

But after February rolls on by, both of those options go away for the CCNA: Voice. So if you are just getting starting into it, I would suggest the new test: ICOMM. From what I remember, it is all about the basic configuration of a pre-installed environment. By that nature, you would need to 'touch' equipment.

Do I think you could 'understand' it? Yes. Do I think you could probably pass the test? Yes. Should you? Probably not. But that is my opinion. With emulators like GNS3, VM Ware, and network equipment not being nearly as expensive anymore, you should be able to get a cheap lab and not only fully understand, but also be an individual competent in the exam topics.

phoeneous

mikej412 wrote: »

Which CCNA:Voice option are you looking at?

After Feb 28, 2011, there is only one option for the CCNA:Voice, the ICOMM exam. The lab requirements for that are far different than the requirements for the current IIUC exam (or the CVOICE option to earn the CCNA:Voice).

Where are the lab requirements, I can't find them.

azaghul

This could be a good primer...

ICOMM Overview by Kevin Wallace

YouTube - ICOMM Lab 1 - Overview of ICOMM

mikej412

phoeneous wrote: »

Where are the lab requirements, I can't find them.

You either figure it out yourself from the exam blueprint or you find someone who has taken the official cour$e and sneak a peak at their student lab guide to see what the course lab setup was.

ICOMMS is mostly a software configuration and operations exams, but the verify PSTN connectivity task and Troubleshoot endpoint issues tasks pretty much implies you are probably provided with a working and pre-configured/installed CCVP environment.

As I said in a previous post somewhere -- it almost sounds like its easier to do all the CCVP exams (except for maybe the Troubleshooting exam) so that you know how to build and configure the environment that you'll need for the ICOMMS exams.

seekrit

It seems odd to me that they would reduce the standard 90 minute exam to 75 minuets and still keep the test at 60-70 questions. They did the same thing to the CCIE LAB's by removing the last 2 hours.