Cisco Packetized Voice & Data Integration

Rating:
Summary: Cisco Packetized Voice & Data Integration
Review: Caputo provides an excellent balance between theoretical background and Cisco specific information. Chapter 3, "voice concepts for data engineers" provides just the right level of information needed to understand voice technology, and the challenges of packetized delivery.

Another nice featue is the clearly tabulated facts and figures, which make this book an excellent reference for even the experienced reader.

Overall, Caputo has provided a text that contains everything required to understand and implement successful voice and data integrated networks with Cisco technology.

Rating:
Summary: Packed with info, but poorly written
Review: I'd have rated this book much lower if it wasn't cram packed full of great information. The problem is, the writing style makes it impossible to read this book from cover to cover if you don't already know everything in it. If ever an IT book was screaming for a glossary, this was the one. The author habitually uses terms and acronyms as if the reader already knew them, and then goes on to define them chapters later. At least on one occassion, I found a term used in chapter 2 defined in chapter 3. The definition of the term used another that wasn't defined until chapter 5. As said, there's no glossary, and the index is entirely too sparse to cover for that omission. Reading this book WILL teach you well, but don't sit down with it without a reference library and/or net connection handy to look up the terms that you can't find any other way.

Rating:
Summary: Packed with info, but poorly written
Review: I'd have rated this book much lower if it wasn't cram packed full of great information. The problem is, the writing style makes it impossible to read this book from cover to cover if you don't already know everything in it. If ever an IT book was screaming for a glossary, this was the one. The author habitually uses terms and acronyms as if the reader already knew them, and then goes on to define them chapters later. At least on one occassion, I found a term used in chapter 2 defined in chapter 3. The definition of the term used another that wasn't defined until chapter 5. As said, there's no glossary, and the index is entirely too sparse to cover for that omission. Reading this book WILL teach you well, but don't sit down with it without a reference library and/or net connection handy to look up the terms that you can't find any other way.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for network engineers w/o telephone experience!
Review: The information is geared towards the network engineer that has limited phone knowledge, which was perfect for my own background.

The book has excellent technical accuracy and the data is presented well. The book requires relatively strong strength in a networking background because many references are made to associated technologies without explaining them. Explaining such things would be outside the scope of this book.

When/if you read this book, try to seek out unfamiliar terms in the index or look them up elsewhere. Most of the data is relevant and worth understanding as you go along.

Reading and understanding this book gave me a great understanding of VoIP and I now believe that I can effectively evaluate and implement VoIP solutions.

The CCIE program has publicly announced inclusion of VoIP in the CCIE Routing-Switching laboratory exam. Through my experience, I belive that this book is a valuable resource in acquiring the VoIP knowledge necessary to achieve this certification.