passed CVOICE 642-437 this morning
macattacker
Member Posts: 26 ■□□□□□□□□□
Got a good pass this morning 974/1000. Made a lazy mistake on one question. I realised as soon as I hit the "next" button. That probably would have given me a 1000.
Sometimes I find during these Cisco exams, I start to lose concentration and the mind wanders. It can be hard to stay super sharp and focussed, especially when there are other candidates doing their exams and tapping away on the keyboard in the same room.
Here is a summary that may help others.
I*found study for CVOICE quite daunting initially. There is a LOT of material to cover and plenty of new stuff beyond CCNA Voice. The book is rather huge and the nuggets video series is a big 'un.One thing I started to do was play the videos at 1.6 times normal speed. Jeremy Ciaora's delivery is not concise and he talks a lot of superfluous stuff which really soaks up your precious time, so it was great to speed through the videos at 1.6 times normal speed.
Concepts like CUBE, RSVP based CAC MGCP, H323 and SIP take a fair bit of time before they become familiar and sink in. You do need to know their call establishment/operation procedures and also the sub-protocols each one uses.Gateways, Gatekeepers, Call Agents and CUBEs all become a bit of a blur. You just have to slowly categorize and commit to memory what goes with what etc.
Then the whole field of QoS and the different methods of implementing it also takes time to register properly. DSCP, CoS, ToS, layer 2+3 QoS are confusing, but at the end of it and reading through it a few times, everything makes sense. DSCP value conversion to decimal and vice versa takes some work to understand.
Calculations for bandwidth are another challenge, especially if you don't have a background in networking theory or mathematics.
For CVOICE I did not need to do any hardware lab work. I have already set up a CME / SIP ITSP network for CCNA Voice, and found that this hands-on experience was enough to do CVOICE without any additional lab work.But certainly for the next exam topic (CUCM) I will buy a server and do more lab work.
Overall I found the topic really good from a learning point of view. It was hard work and a bit boring in places, but totally worth it. Even if you are not in the industry and don't have work experience, I would still recommend completing the CCNP Voice track. For starters, it is just plain fun (if you like VoIP) and additionally,you will be able to really hit the ground running when you do get an actual VoIP job. Your knowledge will be far more than someone with just a CCNA Voice qual.
Sometimes I find during these Cisco exams, I start to lose concentration and the mind wanders. It can be hard to stay super sharp and focussed, especially when there are other candidates doing their exams and tapping away on the keyboard in the same room.
Here is a summary that may help others.
I*found study for CVOICE quite daunting initially. There is a LOT of material to cover and plenty of new stuff beyond CCNA Voice. The book is rather huge and the nuggets video series is a big 'un.One thing I started to do was play the videos at 1.6 times normal speed. Jeremy Ciaora's delivery is not concise and he talks a lot of superfluous stuff which really soaks up your precious time, so it was great to speed through the videos at 1.6 times normal speed.
Concepts like CUBE, RSVP based CAC MGCP, H323 and SIP take a fair bit of time before they become familiar and sink in. You do need to know their call establishment/operation procedures and also the sub-protocols each one uses.Gateways, Gatekeepers, Call Agents and CUBEs all become a bit of a blur. You just have to slowly categorize and commit to memory what goes with what etc.
Then the whole field of QoS and the different methods of implementing it also takes time to register properly. DSCP, CoS, ToS, layer 2+3 QoS are confusing, but at the end of it and reading through it a few times, everything makes sense. DSCP value conversion to decimal and vice versa takes some work to understand.
Calculations for bandwidth are another challenge, especially if you don't have a background in networking theory or mathematics.
For CVOICE I did not need to do any hardware lab work. I have already set up a CME / SIP ITSP network for CCNA Voice, and found that this hands-on experience was enough to do CVOICE without any additional lab work.But certainly for the next exam topic (CUCM) I will buy a server and do more lab work.
Overall I found the topic really good from a learning point of view. It was hard work and a bit boring in places, but totally worth it. Even if you are not in the industry and don't have work experience, I would still recommend completing the CCNP Voice track. For starters, it is just plain fun (if you like VoIP) and additionally,you will be able to really hit the ground running when you do get an actual VoIP job. Your knowledge will be far more than someone with just a CCNA Voice qual.
Comments
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aaron0011
Member Posts: 330
Congrats, I passed CVOICE last week with the same score and echo your comments. I didn't build a lab either but did type commands in a single router to get familiar with them. I also used the Press Book and CBT Nuggets.
I've got CIPT1 scheduled for next Thu. I've read the entire Press Book already in just a week. Two weeks total to prepare for the exam might seem too fast, but I have a lot of experience with CUCM. The majority of topics were just refreshers and the book helped fill in gaps on certain details (80 ms max latency for clusters over WAN for example). For features that I don't use in my company's production environment I set up a lab to practice configuring those.
CIPT2 will be another story. I expect it to be the hardest one out of the bunch for me.
