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Cisco IP Communicator (CIPC) requires a sound card be installed on a PC in order to install or open. Under normal circumstances, this completely makes sense. However, in other circumstances (demos/labs), PCs are actually virtual machines … and do not have sound cards. In these situations, the engineers/trainers/etc are more concerned with dialing than actually hearing audio.

In order to use CIPC in a virtual machine, install Virtual Audio Streaming – a virtual sound card tool from ShiningMorning.com prior to installing CIPC. This software will install virtual audio drivers on your VM which allow CIPC to install and have dialing capabilities. Unfortunately, CIPC will still only allow one instance to run at a time…unlike IP Blue. I have tested this with VMWare ESXi but it may also work with other VMWare products.
 
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This tutorial is a continuation of the virtual voice lab series. In this tutorial, you will add a dial-plan to the PSTN router that was added in the first part of the PSTN simulation lab. (more…)

This tutorial is a continuation of the virtual voice lab series. Unfortunately, the virtual voice lab has been a “work in progress” much longer than I had hoped it would be when I started it two years ago. In this tutorial, you will add a new router to your GNS3 topology. It will connect it to the HQ, BR1 and BR2 routers to simulate an Internet connection and the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

There is one caveat to this PSTN simulation… GNS3/Dynamips is not capable of simulating traditional analog or digital circuits. We will be simulating an Internet Telephony Service provider (ITSP). ITSPs have become increasingly popular in the past ~5 years. Basically, the PSTN router will route incoming calls to the branch routers and received outgoing calls from the branch routers over a SIP or H323 trunk.
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Since passing my voice lab, I have had several requests from candidates asking to me provide a list of the equipment I used in my home lab. As I stated in earlier posts, during my V2 studies and due to not having a Catalyst 6500 w/ 6508, or a VG248 in my lab, I subsidized my study sessions with rack time from Proctor Labs. I would mostly do this during full mock lab sessions, and then utilize my own rack during everyday study.

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Well, it has almost been three weeks since I passed the Voice lab, and I have to say, as much as I love to study and learn, it has been nice not having the pressure and spending every free minute in the lab or reading! Sure over the past few weeks I have still cracked a book almost every night, but I have also been spending some well deserved time just hanging with my family and doing things like playing video games with my boys. Fun stuff!

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Attention Everyone! Please join me in congratulating James Key for passing the CCIE Voice lab. In the words of James himself … “It is done. CCIE #25772 Voice“. For those of you not on twitter, James passed the CCIE Voice lab on Tuseday of this week.

Allow me to give you a little background on his achievement. I first met James 3 1/2 years ago when he was hired as an entry level Cisco engineer with very little experience. He left a good job as a …cough…Windows Admin to pursue a career as a Cisco Engineer. Shortly after one year in the field, he made an announcement to our group that he was pursuing the CCIE Voice certification. At that time, we had no idea what kind of dedication he would show to achieve this goal.

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A week and a half until my first attempt at the new version 3 voice lab and my studies have progressed well over the past few months despite being very busy with work. I also believe taking some time off after my last failed attempt of the V2 lab was a good decision. Motivation has been good and it has been nice to learn some of the new technologies and features that we have been able to implement in some of our real world telephony deployments.

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I just wanted to take a minute to post links to a site that were very helpful to me last week. At my job, I rarely use UCCX(IPCC). The extent of my UCCX experience is scratching my way through the documentation enough to use it for TAPs and thats it. I installed it again recently for an install but instead of fumbling through the documentation, I went to blogsearch.google.com and found Alex Hannah’s site: UCCX.net. Below are links to a few of his video tutorials that were very helpful. Thanks Alex!

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Studies for the new V3 lab have been underway for a little over a month. Most of this time has been spent reading the CME 7.0 and CUCM 7.0 SRNDs and more specifically, those sections which introduce new features and technologies. A section I have really focused on, reading several times now, is the CUCM Dial Plan section. There are a lot of new topics to become familiar with. + Dialing, Globalization, Localization, Normalization, and Local Route Groups, to name a few.

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The Cisco Unified Reporting tool is a web application that can be accessed at the CUCM console and is a quick and convenient way to gather data about a CUCM cluster as well as information that may be helpful in troubleshooting.

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