By Kevin Wallace Cisco Voice Over IP (CVoice) (Authorized Self-Study Guide) (3rd Edition) [Hardcover]

did the job, i passed

nice product

I am relatively new to the world of VoIP and this book is proving to be very valuable in the real world, which afterall is what it's all about. The details in the book are not too 'geeky' or too technical, they are explained brilliantly with some good examples to help you understand the topics.The accompanying cd contains some useful videos, although you'd be better off getting the CBT Nuggets rather.The new curriculum see's the Gateway/Gatekeeper exam integrated into CVoice. Since I have no frame of referrence I can't say how much better it would be to study the two separately. But for a solid introduction and more into the world of Cisco VoIP, this is the book to get.

Good coverage of the topics for the exam. I am yet to take the exam, but referencing the sylabus, it's pretty much all there. Personally I am finding it hard going. I'm on my second read through now and it is just as hard as the first read through even with a general understanding of all of the topics. I would say it's different to many of the other Cisco cert books I've read in that it's dry, very much "Just the facts, ma'am" no humour or real attempt at relating the topics to anything other than the subject matter. So although this is only a small book it does take a while to get through.It's worthy of 3 stars just because it covers the sylabus quite well, but if another book was available for the exam I'd certainly buy it. Also for someone like me who is at the begining of his Cisco Voice certification track, it doesn't encourage me to want to continue to study the voice track.

This book provides coverage of nearly all the topics you'll need to know for the 642-436 exam, but there's enough gaps to hinder your ability to pass! Important topics like trunk groups are left out, but having said that the CBT Nuggets CVOICE materials have even more important stuff missing. It's always worth having multiple sources of information when studying for a certification.The order of the chapters needs reworking as you'll often find stuff referred to that's not explain till later, also there's a fair few mistakes in the textbook so check the online errata.So in conclusion it's a good textbook, but should be better.

This book is laid out in such a way as to make it almost unusable! the number of times i've had to re-read sections of this book i'm really beginning to loose count. It breaks from Wendell Odom's winning formula "do i know this chapter" and good "chapter summary" questions. The only thing I can say that is positive is that there are good CBT clips (5 clips) on the CD.Honestly. get some CBT nuggets off the web. This book is useless. Once i'm done with this exam, it's going in the bin!