Cisco Voice Certifications – Part 1: An Overview

This post is the first in a series that will focus on the Cisco Voice certification track. Study methods, exploration of test blueprints, and technology write-ups will be included, with a goal of helping you on your path to achieving your certification goals from the CCNA to the CCIE. As an instructor for voice classes and a voice engineer, one of the most rewarding aspects of the process is knowing that I’ve helped somebody further his or her knowledge, and hoping that the student in turn will help someone else. This is the driving reason for this blog series, and Network World is a great fit. There are excellent resources on the Cisco Subnet specifically related to the Cisco certification world already, such as Wendell Odom’s Cisco Cert Zone and Kevin Wallace’s Cisco Cert Prep. Both of these blogs have great tips, resources and methods for attaining certifications, and this series will build on those concepts, while being dedicated to the voice track and it’s unique nature within the scope of Cisco certifications. The Voice certification track is laid out in a similar structure to the other tracks such as Routing and Switching, Security, Wireless, etc, but is unique in it’s breadth of technologies and their implementations. Beginning with a CCNA Voice cert, the track then moves to the recently renamed CCNP Voice (previously known as CCVP) and finally the CCIE Voice. Each level of certification focuses on a more in depth knowledge, and is geared towards smaller scale network administration and configuration at the CCNA level, through enterprise level multi cluster VOIP networks at the CCIE level. Recently, Cisco has overhauled the blueprints across all of the levels of the track, and it is now a truly scaled structure. This means that studying for the CCNA will lay the foundation for all further studies, and all of the knowledge gained will be relevant to the more advanced certifications. This offers a well defined path for those wishing to be certified, and allows them to know that what they study at the associate level will be used again all the way through the expert level, and therefore reinforced. So if you are starting out your voice certification journey, or you are getting ready for your CCIE lab, stay tuned, as we will be exploring study methods that can help at any level in the next post, and look forward to starting a discussion with you the reader on the topics you would most like covered. Good luck with your studies, and let’s hear those phones start to ring!