I'm sick of Voice

mguy

I will most probably take a paycut to get it so money is already on the table. I'm hoping for it to scale nicely over the years so that's my concern.

Iristheangel

To be fair to aspiring VoIP engineers, I don't know if I'm giving Voice a valid shot. I'm working on my MSISA and very long hours at work doing some AMAZING things. While Voice brings in some familiar concepts such as trunking, call routing, PBXs, etc, I find myself getting lost more often in it. I don't know if it's really that hard or I'm just tired and trying to study too many different things at once. I decided to switch gears this week and start working on two sets of video courses. After I'm done with that, I'll work my way through the official CCNA Voice book and the network sim I have for voice. I also got luck because we just decommissioned our Call Manager 8.6 server from production and I'm going to set it up in our lab to start working on it for fun. My ETA to get done with this certification is by the end of December.

Overall, I don't see myself getting into this much further than the CCNA Voice. I admire the people who can go as far as the CCNP or CCIE Voice. You guys are admirable and I give you all the props in the world but it's probably never going to be the thing that seems "fun" to me.

m3zilla

I thought I was the only one who doesn't like Voice! I remember watching the CCNA Voice CBT Nuggets and was puzzled at how Jeremy can be so excited talking about voice codecs. I don't know how you voice folks enjoy working with CUCM, or whatever it is that you do on a daily basis!

Personally, firewalls and routing/switching is much more interesting.

Shanman

I too should not be reading this thread. I have just recently accepted a promotion from my current employer who is a Cisco gold partner to move into the voice field. To be honest I have very little experience with voice besides setting up Auto QoS. They are pushing me hard to get to CCNP voice and I will be drinking from the fire hose but I was looking at it from the experience aspect.

I hope I don't get as grumpy as you.

Lizano

We are just grumpy, because Voice is something that generates a lot of complaints, wait till the CFO gets a call with poor audio quality cause his phone was plugged into the wrong port so traffic wasn't prioritized. That doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue Voice. It's interesting, you make money, people just complain too much, but end users complain everywhere, we wouldn't have a job without them.

I like to complain about Voice because I never liked Voice, I studied and pursued Security, thinking I could become a Security expert. Now a days, you have to be a jack of all trades. No matter how hard I tried to avoid it, every where I go I end up supporting some significant percentage of Voice issues. But would I say you should be concerned? No. I would say you don't have a choice and in the end, it's worth it.

phoeneous

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

Don't even look at it as $$$$$, look at it as "Wow, I am going to get my hands on some Cisco Voice work. Nice" because having that on your CV is NEVER going to backfire or lose value trust me.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here

Personally, I love voice. Probably because I do just enough of it to keep me in check. I had to roll out a few 9971's with the anyconnect client configured for some nationwide clients. So not only was getting the ASA configured correctly fun (not), setting up the route groups, route lists, and route patterns was.

I've worked on NEC and some other off brand system that I can't even remember, and I'd take Cisco over those two any day of the century.

Plus being able to setup a fully working voip system on the same box as your router is pretty impressive in my book.

RouteMyPacket

phoeneous wrote: »

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic here.

Absolutely not, 100% serious! It's never a bad thing to get good hands on experience regardless if it is your "thing" or not. As someone mentioned above, we will always be a jack of all trades at the end of the day and it's good to be diverse and have the exposure.

jibbajabba

I don't even like talking on the phone ... supporting it would be my worst nightmare and I had to do some Avaya work once. They tried to push me into training and certification and whilst it was paid - what is the point in just getting it on the CV if that is something I will never EVER wanna do in my whole bloody life (again)

Your only appreciation is not getting fired for stuff not working

I was constantly fighting the so called "power" user who kept screwing things up with configs he had no clue about and the Avaya kit which kept falling apart without the company wanting to spend any money and bought "spares" on eBay for crying out loud ...

It sometimes impresses me how an important infrastructure such as voice gets sometimes little to now attention - but still demand it working 24/7

phoeneous

My prediction is that there is going to be a high demand for voice guys with hosted voip ramping up cloud style in the next 5 years. Thoughts?

networker050184

VoIP as a 'cloud' service is nothing new and voice has been a 'hot' skill for quite a while now. I used to do this work about five years ago and it was difficult to find people then but plenty of people have jumped on the bandwagon by now. I don't see the need for voice professionals growing too drastically in the next few years personally.

phoeneous

REMOVED UNNECESSARY QUOTED REPLY FROM PREVIOUS POST

I didn't say it was new, but ramping up. Cloud is such a buzz word with marketing and c-level execs not to mention cost savings the cfo thinks he will get. Everyone wants to be in the stupid cloud...

shodown

There isn't much cost savings in the cloud for VOIP. Some providers offer service as low as 35 per seat to as high as 200 per seat depending on the features. What it boils down to is this. If you just need dial tone(accountants, most small businesses) and basic features the cloud works great for you. If you live and die by your phones(law firms, sales, call centers) You would be foolish to have a cloud system. I recently had to setup a voip system for 4 users due to the cloud not providing the level of service they needed to compete in business.

it_consultant

REMOVED UNNECESSARY QUOTED REPLY FROM PREVIOUS POST

I moved a CC to the cloud and it was awesome for them. I think though, people have to be realistic. If you want a high level of service and cloud, you are going to pay in infrastructure. For my call center, they had a P2P connection punched into the cloud provider's datacenter. I have seen plenty of VOIP cloud phones popped into networks backboned by a comcast business modem and yes, their experience was not positive.

RouteMyPacket

Ok, I like Voice again. Got some configurations complete (I think) for a site. Now just waiting for this guy to literally plug the cable in

Roguetadhg

You're a Fickle, Experienced man, RouteMyPacket.

shodown

it_consultant wrote: »

I moved a CC to the cloud and it was awesome for them. I think though, people have to be realistic. If you want a high level of service and cloud, you are going to pay in infrastructure. For my call center, they had a P2P connection punched into the cloud provider's datacenter. I have seen plenty of VOIP cloud phones popped into networks backboned by a comcast business modem and yes, their experience was not positive.

How many phones. We arent talking a 400 user call center are we?

it_consultant

No, it was 45 concurrent so the bandwidth was pretty simple. If we are at 400 concurrent calls, that particular provider would install some of their equipment on the one end. Honestly, the next CC I talk too I will recommend a cloud solution as an option. I am a huge fan of the massive Avaya call center implementations, generally they work pretty well, but you can avoid a crap-ton of work going cloud.

RouteMyPacket

Roguetadhg wrote: »

You're a Fickle, Experienced man, RouteMyPacket.

I don't think he ever plugged the cable in so standby on my last assumption

phoeneous

it_consultant wrote: »

you can avoid a crap-ton of work going cloud.

But isn't that the point of all the studying and all the certs?

RouteMyPacket

ttt


I $%#@!#$% HATE Voice!

Sitting here working on one of my VG's that will take a command but it will NOT retain it. Buggy ios relating to MGCP so great now I am looking at a SW upgrade.

So much for studying tonight or going to bed early. FML!

chrisone

I dont touch the voice equipment and i am so sick of it as well. But because its VOIP and it runs over my network I have to hear about the damn Avaya voice quality "its the network" "its the network" excuse.

until i added SLA monitors site to site then i have proof to show them the SLA MOS