Cisco Voice Over Frame Relay, ATM and IP
Reviewer Name: Mark G. Reyero
Reviewer Certification: CCIE No. 12932
A good introduction to Cisco VoIP technologies.
I recently picked up a copy of Cisco Voice Over Frame Relay, ATM and IP 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 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 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 the Cisco Systems web site.