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WAN/LAN/VoIP Training Other than Cisco?
skeezix-the-cat asks: "After 9/11, the economy tanked, and a lot of state budgets shrank drastically, especially IT budgets. I work for a NOC for a western state with a population as sparse as Wyoming, but not nearly as well connected that was particularly hard hit by the recession. Training money at our agency has been scant, almost non-existent since 2001. Security has seen some bucks, and Windows/Microsoft training of course for the LAN team but general WAN training has suffered. Cisco VoIP training would be swell, and it's everywhere (but in our state). I have one shot at top-shelf training, a week, maybe two. What else is out there as far as LAN/WAN/VoIP training that would cover VoIP and related in a non-Cisco format that still would translate into my Cisco environment?"
"Even with the lack of training, we do ok -- Cisco TAC is nothing to sneeze at, Qwest carrier services techs are available and (IMHO) second to none, and our WAN team is blessedly a talented bunch of self starters. We route, switch, tunnel and bridge just about any whacked out architecture you can think of (but no MPLS yet.....). Our WAN is insane --multi-vendor frame, ATM, private DSL, private-line, lashed to a Sonet-MGX core (among other aggregation schemes), you name it we do it.
It has come to pass that I have a rare opportunity for some honest-to-god paid-for training, and w/ VoIP barreling down on everyone, this is where i'm looking to throw myself with this chance. We are pretty much a Cisco shop, but some agencies are prevailing on non-Cisco VoIP solutions. I have CBWFQ successfully making VoIP work --VoIP 'trunking' switch-attached phones between multi-cloud-connected sites w/ ATM-- across select backwaters of our network, I grok the basics and can even make it work.
I'm no expert, but I'm to the point, having made it work in one or two locations, that I have some nuanced, technique questions even (queueing, etc). If the Cisco training is all that's realistically available, I'll take it and be grateful, be it Cisco VoIP offerings or (jeepers) CIT would be fantastic...arguably better/more useful than the VoIP stuff, per se.
Is anyone out there prevailing on any great WAN/routing/QoS/troubleshooting training that *isn't* Cisco? Management wants me to tell them what I want, and tell them soon as in within the week --before the money evaporates."
It has come to pass that I have a rare opportunity for some honest-to-god paid-for training, and w/ VoIP barreling down on everyone, this is where i'm looking to throw myself with this chance. We are pretty much a Cisco shop, but some agencies are prevailing on non-Cisco VoIP solutions. I have CBWFQ successfully making VoIP work --VoIP 'trunking' switch-attached phones between multi-cloud-connected sites w/ ATM-- across select backwaters of our network, I grok the basics and can even make it work.
I'm no expert, but I'm to the point, having made it work in one or two locations, that I have some nuanced, technique questions even (queueing, etc). If the Cisco training is all that's realistically available, I'll take it and be grateful, be it Cisco VoIP offerings or (jeepers) CIT would be fantastic...arguably better/more useful than the VoIP stuff, per se.
Is anyone out there prevailing on any great WAN/routing/QoS/troubleshooting training that *isn't* Cisco? Management wants me to tell them what I want, and tell them soon as in within the week --before the money evaporates."
has some certs other than that you are looking at proprietary certs for a particular product.
> After 9/11 the economy tanked
I just would like to point out that the U.S. economy was heading for a correction about that time. It has proven convenient for people to blame terrorism for problems with the U.S. economy rather than address root causes. Then again, perhaps the poster was not implying cause and effect here?
Is this the promised end? Or image of that horror? KING LEAR
YDI (DC based, I think) offers training seminars/conferences. I've sent some employees there and have been reasonably satisfied with the results. Here's their info page: http://www.ydi.com/support/training.php
caritj.org
New Kinetics http://newkinetics.com/ offer VoIP training, primarily focused on European clients for their VoIP courses, though they do perform in house training in the US too.
What have I learned about VoIP and different companies? Mostly that one company's management tools are a world of difference away from another's.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Buy the Cisco Press books then take the certification test. Then pass the books on to the next person in your department. Easy as pie. Those classes are usually hard to learn anything concrete from anyway.
Avaya has a very strong presence in the VoIP world. They offer training all over so check them out. Will it carry over? It depends. All of the management and software is different between vendors. Sure, some of the underlying stuff is the same, but anything you usually mess with is different.
Get FreeSCO (http://www.freesco.org/) and download FAQs and stuff. Even the "cheap" training places don't offer their product for free, and you can at least nail the concepts down with books and Internet-provided information. I work for a $4 billion pharmaceutical and am allowed exactly one training course per year.
I understand you want to get some formalized training while the getting is good. Don't blame you there.
But, honestly, the absolute best way to learn something like this is to do it. Download asterisk and start playing. You can even connect a free soft-phone (SIP) to it so there is really no up front cost.
IMHO, formalized training is only useful *after* you have already learned a good deal about the subject matter. It gives you a chance to organize all you thoughts that have been plaguing you, and have a compentent teacher answer them for you.
Going in cold to VOIP lab, when you leave you will understand some jargon - but most of the deep concepts will escape you.
You don't need a training class. If you go through the Cisco web site, you'll see that all of the manuals are right there. While lengthy, those manuals provide very comprehensive discussion around the specific commands/steps to implement the concepts. If you look at the tech notes, you'll find all sorts of information on the theory. Together, you get a comprehensive picture of both the high-level concepts and the low-level commands.
I just went through a CallManager/CRS installation, and spent most of my time reading the Admin Guides and the System Guides, and spent some quality time with the VoIP-specific IOS guides to setup my gateways. Really, look in the manual, and you'll see: Step 1: bla, Step 2: bla, To Verify Setup: bla. No training, no certification, just a working system. Those manuals are great, and TAC will help you out on the rare occasion you get stuck.
From your question, it really looks like you've figured out the CallManager stuff, and are now just optimizing your network. The thing to keep in mind about VoIP is that it's oIP. All of the knowledge that you already have about traffic optimization applies directly to the voice traffic.
Spend your training bucks elsewhere, preferably at a conference that takes you to Tahiti.
Well, there are a few standards in the area of VoIP so, your request shouldn't be out-of-line. But, the fact is that the two biggest players in the VoIP arena are Cisco and Nortel. They both claim to follow the standards but, they also both have enough of their own proprietary stuff in there to make them non-standard. Cisco waffles on about H323 and SIP, Nortel does too but, both prefer their own signaling system.
Your employer, a government agency, is unlikely to implement any of the lessor vendor's products. Furthermore, you will never see the likes of Asterisk or Skype while employed there. This all means that you should get vendor training from whomever your employer is most likely to implement. On the surface, it sounds like that would be Cisco but, check the telephone on your desk. If it is a Nortel phone, then there is a good chance that your state may implement a Nortel VoIP solution.
sorry, this is what I meant to type in . . http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-VoIP+Training Asterisk is worth looking into - install if you like. It is compatible with sip and cisco's "skinny" protocol and works with cisco phones as well as many others. It also does h.323 (if you like pain), iax2 (used by some big companies such as VoicePulse), adsi, sip, etc. http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Aster isk
You can download an iso and install it from the iso or run from a live cd:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+installatio n+tips
all above are from http://wwww.voip-info.org/
Hmm.. so your environment is Cisco, but there are no Cisco classes in your area... but on the other hand, Cisco education is much more widely distributed than any other type of networking training... Wait... why don't you just go to Cisco training again?
Sure, there's Juniper, etc. But the reality is that Cisco still has the most comprehensive, practical, network training on the planet.
Classes aren't good for much except the Lab. In the lecture they basically read the book to you, so if you can read for yourself, you might save some money by hitting Ebay for your lab equipment and Amazon for your training material.
If I were you, I'd talk to the finance guys so that they just give you the money and you bring them the bills. I'd invest in books and a nice computer farm at home (in fact I have it already), one fast computer for home entertainment + sometimes a server, a slower and cheap computer for serve, sometimes client and a laptop and you can emulate any environment on these 3 computers (plus you can run vmvare or similar and have even more computers) for instance install asterisk on the cheap server and have fun at home.
And after you're done you can either sell the computers or have them for your own entertainment.
From the article:
Our WAN is insane --multi-vendor frame, ATM, private DSL, private-line, lashed to a Sonet-MGX core (among other aggregation schemes), you name it we do it.
It seems to me that he is already trained and experienced in much more advanced WAN scenarios than FreeSCO could ever offer.
Does FreeSCO support frame-relay, ATM, private DSL, leased line or Sonet? No, I didn't think so. For that matter, does FreeSCO even support a rouing protocol like, RIP2, EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS or BGP? Even Windows 95 can do the "routing" that FreeSCO does but, that doesn't make Windows 95 a router.
Who modded this down? I'm amazed at the number of people who refuse to learn anything unless some authority figure spoon-feeds it to them. People, give yourself a little more credit than that.
If you can't motivate enough for individual study, then select a book or two, form a small group and meet regularly as you work your way through it. Use the internet to find answers to questions that the books don't address. You won't get anything more than that out of an expensive "training" class, except maybe a worthless certificate.
I can't argue with those that tell you to get books and study, as that is a great way to learn.
d ex.php?client_id=196&event_id=13208&bypass_reg=tru e
However, you should be aware of another supplementary training option. Cisco's annual network technology training conference called Networkers is available online for about $300. You will get a subscription to the service for a year, during which you can stream audio and slides from any of the two-hour training sessions presented at the conference. The material ranges from introductory to very advanced, and includes 44 hours of VOIP specific instruction taught by people who really know what they are doing (and hundreds of hours of other material on unrelated routing and switching technologies)
Unfortunately, it doesnt like firefox/linux too much, but it works well on windows.
http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/scp/viewer/in
anyway, highly recommended. and the material can be trusted to be more current than that available in most books.
The best place to get trained is google.com :)