VoIP For Dummies

I bought this book after taking a job with a company that seemed to be screwing up VoIP telephony every step of the way. This book confirmed this. With many highlights and dog eared pages, I placed this on my bookshelf at work. When co-workers said something stupid, I referred to this book for additional credibility on what I was saying to them.Great overview of voice over IP. It is not only a Cisco pandering book like many are. It mentiones SIP and open source methods. Many common basic pitfalls and solutions are discussed. This is a perfect book to read for a small business or group to use before buying hardware or being sold a service or product. It is written in generic form so any vendors products and services can be understood before wasting time, money and effort.Do not buy a MAX Call-Taking VoIP telephone system for a 9-1-1 call center before buying this book. Those that have, are living with the problems that could have been avoided if engineers read the basics of VoIP telephony before making such a horrible product.

This book isn't for technical people looking to implement a VoIP solution. It doesn't even define the terms one typically finds in eBay auction descriptions. For example, a typical description for a VoIP phone contains statements like:- Support popular vocoders including G.723.1 (5.3K/6.3K), G.729A/B, G.711 (a-law and u-law), G.726, G.728, and wide-band G.722 (Model 102D).- Support Silence Suppression, VAD (Voice Activity Detection), CNG (Comfort Noise Generation), Line Echo Cancellation (G.168), and AGC (Automatic Gain Control)There is no introduction to this terminology in the book. Only a few paragraphs on SIP and nothing on H.323, SCCP, or IAX. Nothing about setting up gateways or servers. No mention of Asterisk or Digium cards or Skype.According to the back cover the author is a business professor which is likely the reason for the lack of technical material. I get the impression he is well-versed in traditional telephony systems but his actual hands-on experience with VoIP systems is very limited if it exists at all.

Good as a reference. Good historical information, too. Helped demystify VoIP jargon and concepts. I was looking for a less comprehensive, but more specific guide to actually implementing a Vonage system, explaining option screens and features. This book was, nonetheless, a good resource that filled in much that I did not know about the technology and its politics.

This book was written in 2005 and it really shows. A significant amount of the book revolved around justifying the cost of your VOIP integration by removing Intralata costs. :-). The list of top 10 VOIP providers is full of companies who've gone belly up (RIP Nortel) or merged with each other (Mitel /Shortel). Many of today's big players (Ring Central, 5Nine, Vonage,8x8 etc) never get mentioned.It's also designed for business folks. The topic of jitter gets literally 5 sentences, in the entire book. Dated concepts like Centrex and KTS are covered much more fully. The technical information that is in here is mostly filler, like coverage of the TCP Networking model.And that's a shame, with an update this could be a great and much needed book, but until version 2.0 is released leave this one on the shelf.

This book is written to understand VOIP telephone systems, not the Theory. I was very disappointed..

This may have been relevant in last decade, or century. Also, I had read the AVaya hype years ago. Had I known this was written by and promoting Avaya, I never would have ordered it.

When i got into VOIP sales i couldn't even tell you what VOIP was. This book is a must read for anyone who is interested i VOIP. The author does a great job in dumbing it done in the beginning so you understand what he is talking about. This book saved my life.

If you are a project management practitioner, involved in site conversions (VoIP delivery and implementation), having this book to reference as required---will be a wonderful addition to your project management reference library.Notable too:> Unified Communications For Dummies Tony Bradley> VoIP Deployment For Dummies Stephen P. Olejniczak

It's difficult to know who would find this book truly useful. It spends the majority of its time justifying why VOIP is a good thing for companies. It discusses various schemes for attaching your VOIP-enabled business to the outside world though doesn't have enough detail to equip the reader to actually go ahead and plan something. As a source of sound bites with which to impress the CEO, it might be useful. Unfortunately, I bought the book to find some useful insight into implementing VOIP in a SOHO environment. The only significant reference to VOIP in the home is nothing more than a justification for installing broadband. It's a chapter of a meagre three-and-a-half pages. An awful lot of the book seems to concentrate on assessing the cost of POTS services against VOIP. Unfortunately for UK readers, this is based very much on the way in which service operators charge in the US. The assumption that local calls over PSTN are free, for example, is significantly different to the situation in the UK. All in all, I found very little in this book of value.

Junk

Its a right riveting read is this, if your interested in VoIP, steer well clear if your not as it will bore you to death!

this is written for the USA market so although the principles of VOIP are interesting, comparative cost and benefit of VOIP not relevant for England. An updated book using the English telecom situation would be of more use.

5*