Customer Reviews

Switching to VoIP

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

 

 

It seems like Voice over Internet Protocol, aka VoIP, is starting to become much more mainstream. Not only are businesses switching over, but now you can set up your home phone access to use VoIP (aka "broadband") technology. Ted Wallingford has done a nice job in explaining the business side of the possibilities in the book Switching to VoIP - A Solutions Manual for Network Professionals.

Contents: Voice and Data - Two Separate Worlds?; Voice over Data - Many Conversations, One Network; Linux as a PBX; Circuit-Switched Telephony; Enterprise Telephone Applications; Replacing the Voice Circuit with VoIP; Replacing Call Signaling with VoIP; VoIP Readiness; Quality of Service; Security and Monitoring; Troubleshooting Tools; PSTN Trunks; Network Infrastructure for VoIP; Traditional Apps on the Converged Network; What Can Go Wrong?; VoIP Vendors and Services; Asterisk Reference; SIP Methods and Responses; AGI Commands; Asterisk Manager Socket API Syntax; Glossary; Index

I think the biggest thing to keep in mind when approaching this book is the target audience. While there are a few books out there on "internet telephones" that talk to the consumer, this isn't one of them. The tag line of "for Network Professionals" is the key here. While you don't have to be a network guru to read this book, some level of familiarity with network and telephony concepts would help. Someone either working with the communication systems in a company or heading up a communications department would be a perfect match here. You'd probably even do alright if you just have an interest in the subject, as Wellingford does a good job taking what can be complex material and making it understandable. An admirable task in itself...

What makes this book stand out from other books I'd expect to see is that it doesn't just dwell on jargon and theory. There are a number of projects included in the book so you can get your hands dirty actually working with the technology. Add to that the fact that the author uses an open source PBX system called Asterisk for the exercises. So now you have no reason in terms of cost for not diving right in.

Although I'm not necessarily the target audience for this book, I'd have no problem recommending it to someone looking for material that covers this subject. The book is very well written, and after finishing it you should have a very firm grasp of the essentials. You might even know enough to start yourself on your next career path... :)

As the telcom manager for a rather large enterprise (45,000 users) I try to keep up on the various books on VoIP and this one is pretty good. It is designed towards someone who is knowledgeable about voice and data but not necessarily someone how is an expert in either subject. It also does a very good job of not focusing on any one type of technology but covers H.323, SIP and Cisco amongst many others and gives you a good sense of each flavor that is available. I would recommend it for anyone looking to deploy VoIP.

I can't say this book will answer every question you might have about every piece of VoIP hardware on the market today, but it does a pretty good job of building an understanding of the core concepts shared amongst all the brand names so that you can make the jump from general to specific without too much hair pulling. If any specific product is given more attention than others, it's Asterisk, but that's not only welcome, it's unavoidable given the subject matter. The treatment it receives here also beats the everloving tar out of the O'Reilly book dedicated to Asterisk exclusively.

I enjoyed this book a lot and also read Cisco Press's "Taking Charge of Your VoIP Project" by Walker and Hicks.

Here's my frame of reference on reading and reviewing this book. I am a sys admin at a 75-person company, and I am generalist (Windows servers and desktops, LAN/WAN/wireless, switches/routers/firewalls, VPN, security, training, helpdesk, and phones). This book was targeted at someone like me, who has a networking background but little phone background. We have a full-featured TeleVantage phone system that runs on a Windows server with a 24-channel T1 line to the phone company. I know enough about it to run our phone system, but I don't know much about the underlying telephone technology.

I am considering upgrading to VoIP, because my PCI phone cards (T1 card and telephone station cards) in my phone server are old and no longer supported by new versions of TeleVantage. However, TeleVantage supports VoIP, so all I would have to do is remove the PCI cards and instead use my WAN connection to the outside world and my LAN as my connection to my phones.

This book does a good job explaining traditional telephone technology and then VoIP. The author wrote the open-source VoIP software called Asterisk, so he can speak authoritatively to VoIP. If you are so inclined, you can follow his labs (Projects) throughout the books and build your own VoIP system on Linux and Asterisk. I felt the book had the right level of technical depth for someone of my background.

I thought he also does a good job making a project of moving to VoIP very practical in a business setting. He covers things like current infrastructure assessment, design, doing a migration in chunks, how to minimize user impact, selecting a VAR (value added reseller) and measuring up-front cost and ROI.

Finally, I appreciated his objective perspective on the public telephone network and PBX vs. VoIP, that both have their advantages and disadvantages, and that while implementing and supporting VoIP can be complex, it can be achieved successfully if be done correctly.

My take-away is that I gained a general understanding of how the public phone system works from the point of view of my business, and I now generally understand how VoIP works. I can now speak somewhat intelligently and generally ask the right questions of my TeleVantage software provider and when selecting a SIP provider.

Am I comfortable starting my VoIP migration project based on these two books? Yes. I still have a lot to learn and will make some mistakes, but at least I understand generally where to start and how to proceed.

I teach VoIP & SIP Hands on training classes to clients all over the World for TrainingCity.com. Every week I'm asked what books to buy and I always recommend "Switching to VoIP" as a great starting point to build your knowledge base.

The book is excellent for beginners who need to get up to speed and are looking to build a home lab using open source products such as Asterisk.

I have been looking to use the VoIP capabilities to do video conferencing and provide smart phone videophone access to existing videophones. I have one of these video phones to use as a base system from a large provider. Perhaps I was expecting too much from this book, because it didn't give me more than a couple of pages of hints. However, it gave me more than any other book on VoIP in the way of a clue as to where to search. Nevertheless, for me this book has been a primary introduction to VoIP.

On the other hand, this is an excellent book to help a business administrator become effective in managing a VoIP system and providing examples of command line commands to make this type of system operate correctly. Although the book is becomming dated, it is five years old now, it apparently covers the area of VoIP administration and configuration well. It is going to take me months of further research to explore these areas well enough to see how well this system can provide me with video conferencing ability to smart phones. Perhaps it won't be enough, perhaps the conceptes in this book will lead me to a solution.

In summary, this book is the best of several VoIP books that I have bought in search of understanding VoIP and applying it on Linux systems. If you want to know how to modify the code for your particular application, you will need to seek further on the internet. But, this is an excellent reference and I am happy to add it to my reference book collection. However, I do think that an appendix should have been added to help in seeking full knowledge of this area and I am withholding one star because of its absence.

This book provides a comprehensive look at not only VoIP, but all related legacy telephony systems it may interact with or replace. A wonderful resource for anyone considering a VoIP deployment either at the office or at home. The technical detail and background the author provides in his examples and background information is incredibly helpful. I definately recommend..

Since I'm starting with a knowledge base of zero there is a lot of good information in this book. For technical information it is realtively easy to read. Information may be dated at this point, I won't know till I catch-up.