Your thoughts please

Hatch1921

Hi all,

For those of you pursing CCNA voice or have passed the certification... what route did you take to learn the material?

I spoke with a rep from Cisco | Stormwind IT Training today and we discussed pricing and what the service offers.

Has anyone used Stormwind for Voice or any other Cisco training? If so, what did you think? Was it worth the investment?

I know of INE.com and the free CCNA voice videos they offer... and of course there is CBT Nuggets.

If you do not mind sharing how you prepared for the exam, I would greatly appreciate it. With Stormwind you get a year of access to the videos/training and lab time. I'm unsure at this point which direction to head. Their services sound appealing however, for the investment, I'm wondering if I should go a different route.

Thanks in advance.
Frank

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bobfromfpl

Heres my 2c..

If you do not have access to physical gear at home/work and a training vendor can provide lab equipment for you to use while you are doing your studies than its worth the investment. Otherwise if you're going to do some self-paced study plan without practicing on real gear why pay a vendor for that? You have free resources available (INE) and can probably acquire used books at a fraction of the price.

wgroom

Do you have VoIP experience? Or is this an entirely new topic to you? If it is new, begin by purchasing the CCNA Voice study guide, and reading it cover to cover. Next, try to get a job as a junior VoIP administrator, meet and befriend a VoIP administrator, and pick their brain. See if they can show you some things, and help get you initialized. It seems now everyone wants VoIP jobs, with no clear understanding of telephony nor Cisco equipment. Take your time and LEARN it, not just memorize to pass an exam. Otherwise when a hospital goes down, and no calls in and out, your rear will pass your chest and that is never a good feeling.

ande0255

I am about 2/3 the way through the free streaming CCNA Voice videos on INE.com, then will be reading the Official Cert guide cover to cover and labbing for the next month before the exam.

I'd personally suggest doing some regiment of videos first, to give you a visual grasp of concepts and have them explain, then go through the OCG book to solidify those concepts and fill in the cracks that the videos didn't cover.

Also my suggestion for labbing would be to setup a vmware machine on your pc, and got a copy of the Call Manager install file to load onto the virtual machine - all the necessary components / instructions to set that up should be a google search away. I think you get 60 days to register Call Manager with a license before it locks out functionality, and even at that point you can just blow the virtual box away and reinstall it on another.

I'd suggest going through all the menus, look at all the pages, and get generally familiar with the different fields on different pages so when they are referenced in study material you can flip over to Call Manager and confirm you know where the feature is. Once you have this down you can draw up mock labs of creating new users, implementing call patterns / translations, etc.

I am very fortunate to have landed a role where I have open access to Call Manager and all other technologies all day, otherwise without actually seeing and having a general knowledge of navigating Call Manager, you are going to be in pretty rough shape for the exam / a VoIP job.

Hatch1921

Thank you all very much for your comments. I was out of town and unable to respond sooner. @wgroom I do not have experience with Voip, and thank you for the book suggestions. As of right now... I do not know anyone in the field... will have to work on that for sure.

@ande0255 Thank you for the information as well.. I'll go over the INE.com video series for sure.. you can't beat the price. I like the idea of loading up a virtual machine.

@bobfrompl I was thinking the same thing about the lab time... would be beneficial.. or at least I would hope so... and having access to an instructor is another plus.

Thanks again all... lots to think about.

Frank

ande0255

No problem, and good luck with your studies!

If you have questions about setup of Call Manager once it's loaded on the virtual machine, post them on up.

Hatch1921

ande0255 wrote: »

No problem, and good luck with your studies!

If you have questions about setup of Call Manager once it's loaded on the virtual machine, post them on up.

Many thanks, I'll drop a line when things get going.

Appreciate the help.
Frank