Taking Charge of Your Voip Project

By John Q. Walker, Jeffrey T. Hicks, Jeffrey T. Hicks

Book Overview

Strategies and solutions for successful VoIP deployments Justify your network investment The step-by-step approach to VoIP deployment and management enables you to plan early and properly for... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1587200929
• ISBN13: 9781587200922
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Cisco Press
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Don't Start Without It!

I recently read the book titled "Taking Charge Of Your VoIP Project" by John Q. Walker and Jeffrey T. Hicks. ISBN: 1587200929. The title is a great reference for understanding VoIP technology and helps identify the many aspects that one must consider for a successful deployment of Voice over IP. Reading this book ahead of time will empower the reader with the lingo, technology and solutions to be effective when leading a team. The book starts out by giving the reader an understanding of the basic technology concepts surrounding traditional voice networks, or Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN) and then goes right into the basic technologies that allow Voice over IP (Data) to be a viable alternative to the traditional phone networks. Chapter 2, Building a Business Case for VoIP, gives the reader good information to ponder over and helps identify purpose for building a case for a VoIP solution. The next chapter, "Planning for VoIP" is one of the larger chapters and for good reason. After all, anyone in business knows that planning determines whether the project will go smoothly with little surprise or whether it's a disaster. In this chapter you'll learn about reliability, call quality assessment, and over all VoIP readiness assessment, among other things. Another great chapter is Chapter 5, "Quality of Service and Tuning". Probably one of the biggest challenges that an organization will face. QoS is challenging due to the complexity of a true end-to-end QoS solution in an already complex data network. Accomplishing QoS requires in-depth knowledge of the existing data network. Furthermore, the communication to others on the team of what it's going to take to get the network "up to snuff" to support VoIP will be a task in and of it self. It makes ATM technology look quite attractive. The chapter has quite a bit of detail; however the authors don't drop the reader over the deep end of the technologies. I would recommend this book to those that are anticipating implementing Voice over IP in their network, those that are in the process of piloting Voice over IP or even those that are in the midst of a VoIP implementation would benefit from this title.The book is best suited for Project Managers, management, telecommunication and Data networking personnel. Really and truly, most anyone would benefit from reading this title. It covers such a broad range of information that having a well educated project team is going to ensure that the project goes smoothly and all things are considered. This book does an excellent job of presenting all of the issues that personnel involved in a Voice over IP project should be aware of to ensure success. It gives the reader a great appreciation for the complexities and helps a great deal with ironing out a good sound strategy.This book has several figures, tables and diagrams. Like the old saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words". This statement holds true in the title. Like I always say

VoIP Simplified

Excellent book if you are looking for "in-depth" crash course in to VoIP. The amazing part was vendor neutral tone. Even though it came out of Cisco Press, it hardly preached any specific vendor. It was mostly focused on the fundamentals.However the book lacks a decent index section. Hardly any important words are mentioned.

Taking Charege Of Your Voip Project

I currently work at a Global communications company that is on the cutting edge of worldwide VoIP communications. We are a VoIP provider to several of the Fortune 1000 company's. I am a Data Network Administrator with a background in in voice communications. I also assist in the Internal VoIP projects for the 6 sites I am in charge of. Having said this I have to say that this is one of the best technical reference books I have read concerning the components and software involved in VoIP. John Walker and Jeffery Hicks more than provide entry-level information regarding several very important aspects of VoIP Implementation. It is easy to see that both have a great deal of knowledge not only regarding VoIP but communications in general. It was very refreshing to see that two data guys would know so much about voice and the PSTN. I found that the majority of recommended/more information references that are listed at the end of the chapters are either on my desk or on my wish list. This is an excellent bridge for both data and voice technicians. This book is divided into eight extremely easy to follow well-organized chapters that are written in plain language. While I have read a lot of other technical manuals out of necessity I admit this one I read out of a desire to learn more. This book did not feel like a technical manual. While technical aspects are very well covered this book is less dry than most I have read. Chapter One Voice basics is a great introduction to either the Data or Telephony networking communities. Regardless of which community you come from you will be engaged. This was a great easy way to start this book. The concepts are built upon from here. Chapter Two Building a Business Case for VoIP does a fantastic job of outlining the advantages and disadvantages to deploying VoIP. This chapter also covers ROI and other business obstacles that may effect your deployment. I have never personally had to fiure an ROI so I was not informed as to everything involved with processing the information and this book defiantly helped me in that aspect. Chapter Three Planning for VoIP excellent outline of what needs to be considered before implementation is almost a checklist of what you need to consider and what research needs to be done to your network before you begin. Chapter Four Do It Yourself, or Outsource is a little more business oriented than other chapters but if you are the decision maker this is an excellent source of questions you need to ask yourself or the provider you chose.Chapter Five Quality of Service and Tuning is a great introduction to several key concepts. Several important protocols and queueing techniques are covered with enough detail to get you more involved in performance tuning of your network. This book does an excellent job of introducing MPLS and RSVP. This is a great primer and will lead to a desire to read additional books on these concepts as well as the RFCs listed.Chapter Six Ongoing VoIP Management highlig

Must have if you are moving to VoIP

Switching from a PBX system to VoIP involves numerous planning and implementation decisions, both business and technical. There are many new concepts you have to understand well enough to make the right trade-offs. This book is great for stepping you through all the issues, in order, and gives a clear understanding of how the technology really works. Easier to read cover to cover than most technical books. Well written! The authors clearly know their stuff.

Help others understand the technology

Having been the primary person in charge of implementing all of our company's VoIP and IP Telephony projects, I was more than interested in Cisco Press' Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project (ISBN 1587200929). This book, by John Walker and Jeffery Hicks, does an excellent job providing a good overview of most of the issues that one encounters in a VoIP project.The book is broken up into eight chapters, with topics ranging from VoIP Basics, Planning for VoIP, QoS, and Security. Each chapter averages between 20 and 40 pages. The authors use a style, which will for the most part, not scare away the non-technical among us. Two chapters are slightly more technical than the rest, but this is probably out of necessity. The book is around 270 pages, which I was able to read through in about four hours with a moderate amount of distraction from the TV and kids.As the back cover states, the book is written in plain language and each chapter builds upon the next. You learn about the standards and protocols involved with VoIP, how they interact, and also the hardware and software needed for a successful project. The authors do a great job explaining the budgeting and planning process. I particularly appreciate that this book does a good job presenting the facts and not just serving as a marketing mouth piece for Cisco.In the future, I plan on providing a copy of this book to other members of my team who frequently are involved with the sales process so that they have a good working knowledge of the technology. Furthermore the book will serve as an excellent reference for our pre-sales and project management folks in helping communicating the project progression and planning steps needed. Lastly, I plan on getting a few copies into the hands of key people at sites that are even remotely considering a VoIP project. I feel that this book alone, in the right hands, could close the gap of understanding and provide at least a couple of sales.I wholeheartedly recommend this to sales people, project managers, CEOs, CIOs and anyone else that doesn't have the time or necessarily the desire to wade through the technical manuals that is needed to talk intelligently or understand VoIP. I think the time spent reading this book will be well worth it for anyone who works their way through it.