Anyone have experience/certs with Extreme Networks Switches, Nortel/Avaya phones ?

hi, all...

I just started this noc job, after studying for cisco for 6 months, I got my N+ and CCENT, (trying to find the time now for ICND2)... so basically I got this job and not too hot on it (long hrs, odd off days, vry low pay), seems like we support like 98% Extreme/juniper switches and Nortel/Avaya phone systems, while cool to learn about different vendors...It seems like my job mates are very under educated about what we support, I'm told to ask level 2 engineers for almost every question I have, but I work 2nd and 3rd shift so I never see level 2 guys around, besides, they are almost never in the office, they either work from home, or they're on call, my noc manager basically admitted that I have a better grasp of R/S fundamentals then him. Basically its on me to grab spare equipment and switches around and run threw the CLI.

Anyone mess with Extreme/juniper R/S - nortel/avaya phones ? How'd you like it? Just general opinions? How would you compare their certifications vs CCNA in terms of difficulty? How quick did you pick it up?

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Comments

it_consultant

If you already have a digital cable plant then Avaya is the way to go since you can easily integrate the SIP phones without having different features available depending on whether you are digital or SIP. Nortel and NEC offer this too but the SIP phones have extra features that their digital phones don't. Obviously Cisco is all SIP so you wont be able to reuse the existing cable plant for digital phones if you have one. Remember that digital phones are much cheaper, so unless you are going over the WAN or something you normally don't actually need a SIP phone.

I think gaining Avaya certs is not easy, but learning the equipment is, they are my preferred phone switch.

johnnyarks

it_consultant wrote: »

If you already have a digital cable plant then Avaya is the way to go since you can easily integrate the SIP phones without having different features available depending on whether you are digital or SIP. Nortel and NEC offer this too but the SIP phones have extra features that their digital phones don't. Obviously Cisco is all SIP so you wont be able to reuse the existing cable plant for digital phones if you have one. Remember that digital phones are much cheaper, so unless you are going over the WAN or something you normally don't actually need a SIP phone.

I think gaining Avaya certs is not easy, but learning the equipment is, they are my preferred phone switch.

Could you go into a bit more detail regarding the digital vs SIP? I'd figure SIP was digital...IMO, but I'm kinda speaking out my ass

it_consultant

When we say digital we are talking about phones that talk over a 4 pin cable plant (Over H.232 or whatever the protocol is) as opposed to a 2 pin analog plant. SIP phones run on the corporate ethernet. Digital phones (through Avaya) have all the same features of the IP phones except that they run on the 4 pin instead of ethernet. Using something like Avaya you can run all three technologies over the same phone switch depending on the cabling available. This is impossible on Cisco and harder to do on NECs etc.

You can make your career on Avaya alone. Once you learn call routing logic and phone-tree's you will be a step above most of the pros I work with.

unclerico

I work with extreme switches and I am not a very big fan of them. Every last one of them will be replaced with Juniper or Cisco depending on the requirements.

johnnyarks

unclerico wrote: »

I work with extreme switches and I am not a very big fan of them. Every last one of them will be replaced with Juniper or Cisco depending on the requirements.

really? I though the CLI was very well put together, are you speaking from a reliability pov?

johnnyarks

it_consultant wrote: »

When we say digital we are talking about phones that talk over a 4 pin cable plant (Over H.232 or whatever the protocol is) as opposed to a 2 pin analog plant. SIP phones run on the corporate ethernet. Digital phones (through Avaya) have all the same features of the IP phones except that they run on the 4 pin instead of ethernet. Using something like Avaya you can run all three technologies over the same phone switch depending on the cabling available. This is impossible on Cisco and harder to do on NECs etc.

You can make your career on Avaya alone. Once you learn call routing logic and phone-tree's you will be a step above most of the pros I work with.

Thanks this is helpful!