Switching To VoIP provides a well rounded introduction to voice over IP services. It covers the protocols, the hardware and software requirements, and how to configure the phone environments. The book is literally a
how-to rollout guide. You can either read up on the technology, or follow along with the provided examples.
It does a good job of introducing VoIP by comparing the common analog and digital PBX systems in most offices. The author shows off an impressive knowledge of non-IP telephony environements, so he can relate to how your
environment might be set up, and how it can be migrated to VoIP.
Switching is vendor neutral on hardware and software. It lists comparisons on commercial VoIP environments like Cisco, Nortel, and Avaya. It also provides a list of VoIP service providers, which you will need to make your VoIP network accessable to the world.
And if you don't have a VoIP network, you can quickly build one for next to nothing. The Asterick open source VoIP software is heavily featured throughout the book. You can download it and build a test (or production, for that matter) VoIP network. The book gives information
on software setup, network configuration, network security, and QoS troubleshooting.
I was pretty impressed with this book. It's probably going to be one
of those O'Reilly tomes that I keep on the immediate reach shelf of my office. I was thoroughly impressed with the author's knowledge of the subject matter and his clear writing style.
|
