Piotr Wojciechowski

It took me about half a year to become CCVP certified. From point I'm standing now I can honestly say it's the hardest of all Professional tracks. In this case people who are not working with IP Telephony shouldn't even think about starting this track - and I mean full IP Telephony because implementing gateways and small Unified Communication Manager Express (aka. CallManager Express) solutions are not enough, not to mention that UCME is not covered by exams at all.

What you need to study except books is IP telephony lab. I had CallManager 6.0, 3 routers with FXS, FXO, E1 and ISDN cards, 1 switch, 4 different IP phones, 2 webcams, 2 laptops with software IP Phone and 2 analog telephones, one connected to SIP gateway and one to FXS port. Thats pretty much what you should have to practice. Of course you can have less phones, use more software phones or so, less routers but then you won't really practice advanced and semi-advanced functionality of Cisco Unified Communication Manager, and in new track there are two exams covering that product, not one like it was previously. With this lab you can practice almost everything except clustering.

What you also need is field practice. There are so many things that may go wrong, are not configured straight forward or just are pretty much complicated that only real experience can help you to understand all mechanisms and protocols that are working below IP Telephony. I think that so far, even in era of easy-to-find tests over internet, CCVP is still certification track which is chosen by those who really work with those technologies. Thats why there are less CCVP's in Poland that CCIE's. Dynamips won't help you here.