CCIE Voice Lab update?

IPDirect

Does Cisco have a set pattern on when it updates it's labs? I'm not talking like software updates from CUCM 7.0 to 8.0, but more full on hardware updates.

I'm still early in my CCNP Voice I know 100% I'll be lauching into the CCIE right after I complete my CCNP Voice in the next 6-8 months.

I already have my HQ and BR1 built, but I'm wondering is I should grab the last 2811, E1 cards, hwic-4esw, and a few more phones just to complete the whole thing. Having something half done bugs me (lol), but at the same time, I dont want to buy a bunch of stuff and then realize everything is changed. How soon can we expect a change to the v4 lab?

pitviper

Hard to tell – Probably won’t hear a peep until Cisco LIVE (mid-year?).

I don’t think that the hardware will change much (if at all). The ISR2s (2900s/3900s) are nice, but other than being considerably faster and capable of handing a much higher volume of calls/conferences/endpoints, there aren’t a ton of new “groundbreaking” features over the 2800s/3800s. The 2800s/3800s can run IOS 15, so I would have to think that they will still be relevant for a while at least.

shodown

So far in the 15 line of IOS the key feature that we have seen has been the SIP security feature which is Huge as some SIP trunks are huge security Holes. The 28XX series will have support for the 15.X code so I don't see them being any problems. I think the only thing you would have to be concerned about at this point would be the upgrades to the newer versions of software.