Switching to VoIP: A Solutions Manual for Network Professionals

I enjoyed this book a lot and also read Cisco Press's "Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project" by Walker and Hicks. Here's my frame of reference on reading and reviewing this book. I am a sys admin at a 75-person company, and I am generalist (Windows servers and desktops, LAN/WAN/wireless, switches/routers/firewalls, VPN, security, training, helpdesk, and phones). This book was targeted at someone like me, who has a networking background but little phone background. We have a full-featured TeleVantage phone system that runs on a Windows server with a 24-channel T1 line to the phone company. I know enough about it to run our phone system, but I don't know much about the underlying telephone technology. I am considering upgrading to VoIP, because my PCI phone cards (T1 card and telephone station cards) in my phone server are old and no longer supported by new versions of TeleVantage. However, TeleVantage supports VoIP, so all I would have to do is remove the PCI cards and instead use my WAN connection to the outside world and my LAN as my connection to my phones. This book does a good job explaining traditional telephone technology and then VoIP. The author wrote the open-source VoIP software called Asterisk, so he can speak authoritatively to VoIP. If you are so inclined, you can follow his labs (Projects) throughout the books and build your own VoIP system on Linux and Asterisk. I felt the book had the right level of technical depth for someone of my background. I thought he also does a good job making a project of moving to VoIP very practical in a business setting. He covers things like current infrastructure assessment, design, doing a migration in chunks, how to minimize user impact, selecting a VAR (value added reseller) and measuring up-front cost and ROI. Finally, I appreciated his objective perspective on the public telephone network and PBX vs. VoIP, that both have their advantages and disadvantages, and that while implementing and supporting VoIP can be complex, it can be achieved successfully if be done correctly. My take-away is that I gained a general understanding of how the public phone system works from the point of view of my business, and I now generally understand how VoIP works. I can now speak somewhat intelligently and generally ask the right questions of my TeleVantage software provider and when selecting a SIP provider. Am I comfortable starting my VoIP migration project based on these two books? Yes. I still have a lot to learn and will make some mistakes, but at least I understand generally where to start and how to proceed.

Provides an smooth introduction to the various components that make up a VoIP network...the projects at the end of the chapters are pretty good.

I teach VoIP & SIP Hands on training classes to clients all over the World for TrainingCity.com. Every week I'm asked what books to buy and I always recommend "Switching to VoIP" as a great starting point to build your knowledge base. The book is excellent for beginners who need to get up to speed and are looking to build a home lab using open source products such as Asterisk.

I can't say this book will answer every question you might have about every piece of VoIP hardware on the market today, but it does a pretty good job of building an understanding of the core concepts shared amongst all the brand names so that you can make the jump from general to specific without too much hair pulling. If any specific product is given more attention than others, it's Asterisk, but that's not only welcome, it's unavoidable given the subject matter. The treatment it receives here also beats the everloving tar out of the O'Reilly book dedicated to Asterisk exclusively.

This book provides a comprehensive look at not only VoIP, but all related legacy telephony systems it may interact with or replace. A wonderful resource for anyone considering a VoIP deployment either at the office or at home. The technical detail and background the author provides in his examples and background information is incredibly helpful. I definately recommend..