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A Cisco wannabe with a Nortel system
geek4god
Member Posts: 187
So a few years back I had the choice of going with a vendor I despised and a Cisco phone system or my preferred vendor and a Nortel system. Well I am now the proud owner of a Nortel VOIP phone system. Of course now it is a Avaya supported system. I have had solid local vendor support and my experience is limited to setting up VM boxes, the occasional phone and renaming phones in the directory. I basically have a support contract that covers everything else. I have avoided learning much about it as I never saw it what I wanted to do and as I said I have great support.
Well as we all know and as I am being reminded daily on these boards experience is king. As I have been working through some Cisco stuff I find myself coming back to Voice over and over. So my question is for those that have used both how similar are they? Am I right to assume the switching and routing on the Nortel switches is pretty universal in how it is implemented? I assume the big differences are going to be in some of the management pieces?
I find myself looking at a Cisco voice lab with 6 or 7 phones when I have a Nortel system with 200 phones right here. My ultimate goal in the next year would be to become far more hands on with my Nortel system while picking up the Cisco certs so that in a year’s time I have some documented experience to go along with them, even if it is in a Nortel system.. Any advice or suggestions on how best to do this?
Well as we all know and as I am being reminded daily on these boards experience is king. As I have been working through some Cisco stuff I find myself coming back to Voice over and over. So my question is for those that have used both how similar are they? Am I right to assume the switching and routing on the Nortel switches is pretty universal in how it is implemented? I assume the big differences are going to be in some of the management pieces?
I find myself looking at a Cisco voice lab with 6 or 7 phones when I have a Nortel system with 200 phones right here. My ultimate goal in the next year would be to become far more hands on with my Nortel system while picking up the Cisco certs so that in a year’s time I have some documented experience to go along with them, even if it is in a Nortel system.. Any advice or suggestions on how best to do this?
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lilman2g
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What type of Nortel system do you have? At my job we currently have an Avaya (Nortel) CS2100, CS1000, and a couple of CUCM's. I've recently been exposed to the CUCM so I can't speak on this too much. As far as a difference, there are some in the way each are administered.
On the TDM based Nortel voice systems I been using CLI and a text based menu to do my day to day activities. On the IP based voice systems I've noticed the trend in using a web based GUI for system management. Each vendor will have its own interpretation on where and how things are done, but I wouldn't worry about it too much. You'll pick it up quick with experience.
You are right with routing and switching on Nortel network gear. Difference is in the command syntax to administer the equipment. They use standard based protocols with a few proprietary features, just like Cisco. I do find it easier to work with Cisco network since there are so many resources out there on the Internet, you can pretty much Google any questions you have.
You can check this website out, the guy is real sharp with Avaya/Nortel voice and data technology is a resource I use regularly. Michael McNamara ? technology, networking and IP telephony