Customer Reviews

Fax, Modem, and Text for IP Telephony

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great reference book to understand the latest fax, modem and text for IP telephony technologies. It is certainly not for beginners but more suitable for anyone who has worked with, installed and supported these systems. The prior knowledge of call control protocols, voice gateways, Quality of Services (QoS) and familiarity of Cisco unified voice products and networking is very helpful to understand this book.

The book is divided into four parts starting from fundamental theories, solutions and designs, configuration and troubleshooting. It starts with the basic knowledge on how modem, fax and text telephony works. They come with good illustrations and are very easy to understand. Due to space limitation and various standards, the books only addresses the most common and important protocols for each technology.

The next part describes various switchover methods and transport options to handle fax, modem and text communication. There are so many technical jargons and complex concepts here that readers who are not familiar with these before, can get lost very fast. The book does a good job describing and comparing each method. The best part of this section is on the design guide chapter which shows reader what design considerations they have to review before implementing fax, modem and text communication for different hardware and network.

The configuration part shows various commands and configurations for fax, modem and text for many varieties of Cisco products. I understand that the authors include the configuration parts to complete the reference part of the book. However, since there can be many different commands for different products in different IOS software version, it is best to look up Cisco documentation in the Cisco web site directly rather than using this for configuration basis.

The last part describes the troubleshooting techniques and procedures used by Cisco TAC engineers to resolve fax, modem and text problems. This is the best part of the book to get the insight on how "divide and conquer" troubleshooting is done to find the cause of the problem. It is not easy considering the amount of devices and protocols involved to integrate the fax, modem and text system.

I am usually skeptical on any books that try to claim as definitive resources since they usually come short. However, this book is different. The authors successfully manage to incorporate all these technologies and cover them in details. Some readers might think that the delivery is quite dry but it is expected from a resource book. I rate this book 5 out of 5 starts and recommend this book for people who work with the IP Telephony.

David Hanes, CCIE and Gonzalo Salgueiro, CCIE's FAX, MODEM, AND TEXT FOR IP TELEPHONY is a top pick for any in-depth computer collection catering to college-level administrators and programmers: it offers a comprehensive assessment of information transporting, from the basic theory and operations of fax, modem and text telephony to assessment of current available options. From configuring systems to troubleshooting, it also surveys common routes and options.

- Detailed theory of modems, faxes
- Configuration examples
- Good screenshots
- Good explaination of T37 and troubleshooting t38 and t37

Good for beginners to understand the theory and those who already know the theory can refer the troubleshooting part for faxes and modems