Cisco Voice Over Frame Relay, ATM and IP

I recently picked up a copy of the Cisco Press "Cisco Voice Over Frame Relay, ATM and IP" (ISBN: 1578702275) for review and study for a variety of my Cisco IP Telephony Specialization exams. As some of the previous reviews mentioned, the book does lacks some of the breadth and depth required for some of the newer Cisco IOS features. However, if you are interested in learning the fundamentals of Cisco Voice over Frame Relay, ATM and IP, then this book should serve as a very good starting point. However, any reader should realize that Cisco in constantly adding new feature to IOS as well new hardware platforms. Therefore, if the reader is planning to use this book for exam prep, he/she should visit CCO to complement the information in this book.The first section of the book discusses the historical and theoretical components of both analog telephony and digital telephony. The book provides excellent coverage of analog technologies for those of us from the data/digital world. The early chapters discuss the various signaling concepts, sampling, and voice digitization.The second section of the book covers off on the Cisco-specific hardware platforms that support Voice over Frame Relay, ATM and IP. This is where the book is probably the weakest, mostly due to the fact that much of the router platforms discussed are now End-of-Sale for Cisco. Again, I would recommend that the reader visit Cisco.com after reading this section for the latest on Cisco-specific hardware platforms that support Voice over Frame Relay, ATM and IP.The third section provides the reader with nuts-and-bolts of configuring Cisco Voice over Frame Relay, ATM and IP. Here is where the reader can improve his/her engineering skills by looking at the tons of sample configurations to support VoFR, VoIP, VoATM, QoS, Toll-bypass, and legacy-PBX integration. The final section of the book covers off on both the legacy "old-world" enterprise PBX technologies and the emerging IP Telephony technologies. This section would probably have been better served by moving it to the beginning of the book during the discussion of Analog Telephony and Digital Telephony.All in all, I would recommend the book to any reader who is interested in learning the fundamental basics of Cisco Voice over Frame Relay, ATM and IP, with the one caveat that the reader will need to augment the materials with the latest information from Cisco's website.Mark G. ReyeroCCIE #12932

I read this book in preparation for the CVOICE test. It had a lot of good content but the amount of errors in the book were unbelievable. It sometimes made the topic hard to understand.I think the editors of this book need to get their eyes checked.Other than that the book covered all the necessary material and then some.

I bought this book so that i could prepare myself for the corresponding exam. I have a range of Voice over IP materials including the CIM: Voice over IP Basics, and the Cisco Press 'Integrating Voice and Data Networks' - both of these are fine, but were more geared towards reference rather than as an exam guide (even though you MIGHT be able to use them as that) - the CIM is great for hands on stuff - but is ONLY Voice over IP nor Frame or ATM.I have yet to take the exam (it retires on the 14th of May - which makes this books late publication an interesting matter) but i feel as though i shouldn't have a problem with it after reading this. All telephony components and concepts are explained very clearly (which for someone like me with hardly any telephony experience was a good thing - it is amazing how much we take for granted the simple telephone and how it functions!). Along with the Boson CVOICE 2.0 exams this book will get me through. According to some feedback on the exam it doesn't seem to overly difficult.The above points coupled with the fact it is the ONLY study guide for this exam - should be compelling enough reasons to buy it....