I have quite a number of updates to announce for INE's Voice program. First I will briefly outline them all, and then go into a bit more depth on each.

Outline of New Updates to INE's Voice Program

1. New Live 10-Day Instructor-Led Bootcamps for CCIE Voice Coming to Middle East, South America, Europe and Eastern United States for 2012
2. New Live 5-Day Instructor-Led Bootcamps for CCNA Voice and CCNP Voice Online for 2012
3. L2VPN Extended to our Rack Rental Clients
4. 8 Brand New Volume II Labs to be Released
5. 3 New Alternate PSTN Dialplans and IP Addressing Schemes for All Volume II Labs
6. New Web-based Change Function for CUCM BAT Import/Export TAR Files
7. Free Personal Lab License for the Web-based Variphy Insight Remote Phone Control for INE Customers
8. Transcripts Go Live for CCIE Voice Advanced Technologies Class

 

1) New Live 10-Day Instructor-Led Bootcamps for CCIE Voice

• Live 10-Day Instructor-Led Bootcamp for CCIE Voice in Dubai, UAE will be held Feb 13 - 24
• Live 10-Day Instructor-Led Bootcamp for CCIE Voice in Columbus, OH, US will be held Mar 12 - 23
• Live 10-Day Instructor-Led Bootcamp for CCIE Voice in Santiago, Chile will be held Apr 9 - 20
• Live 10-Day Instructor-Led Bootcamp for CCIE Voice in Amsterdam, Netherlands will be held Jun 4 - 15
• I will teach all live classes
• For the time being, the following promotion is also in effect:

 

2) New Live Online 5-Day Instructor-Led Bootcamps for CCNA/CCNP Voice

• Live 5-Day Instructor-Led Bootcamp for CCNA Voice Online will be held Jan 23 - 27
• Live 5-Day Instructor-Led Bootcamp for CCNP Voice Online will be held Jan 30 - Feb 3
• I will teach all live classes

 

3) L2VPN Extended to our Rack Rental Clients

As we have covered in posts before, Layer 2 VPN is what the real CCIE Voice Lab Exam uses to connect your phones from the actual hardware rack of equipment (which is in San Jose, CA, US) back to wherever you happen to sit to write the your lab exam, and as mentioned in that previous post, we've been providing that same exact experience for you in our live instructor-led classes for some time now. It is, in fact, the only way to properly simulate the real lab exam that you will sit for. We've been receiving requests to bring this same functionality (which our classroom students love) to them when they rent rack time from us for many, many months now. And since we do have the most up-to-date gear at a small fraction of the cost of our competition, you might imagine how many requests like this we have fielded to bring this functionality to the masses. Well, we are doing just that. Beginning what will most likely be a rollout date of next week, we will have all of our new equipment in place to allow this functionality for our remote renters. Obviously you will still need a Cisco router (a cheap Cisco 831 will do), and you also will need at least an inexpensive Catalyst 3550 (which, used are around $150USD on eBay at the moment) to utilize this new feature. We will provide all sample configurations to get you up and going, and will announce here when it goes live, along with an updated Voice Rack Rental Access Guide to provide you with all the necessary information.

 

4) 8 Brand New Volume II Labs to be Released

We will be releasing 3 brand new 8-hour labs in just the next week or so, with an additional 5 that are near completion to be rolled out (as we complete each one) over the next 2 months. These labs are not for the faint of heart, and they test you on the most up-to-date and relevant topics for the CCIE Voice practical lab exam. They will all have Video-based solutions, and we also will have PDF-based solutions coming as well.

 

5) 3 New Alternate PSTN Dialplans and IP Addressing Schemes for All Volume II Labs

For all 10 Volume II 8-Hour Labs, we will be releasing alternate PSTN dial plans and IP addressing schemes. We repeatedly get reports that one of the most difficult things a candidate faces in their attempt at the actual lab exam, is being too familiar with any one vendor's dial plan or IP addressing scheme, and we have repeatedly been asked if we could provide variances to our schemas. So this is exactly what we have set out to do. Look for those to be release in the next few weeks just shortly after the next 3 labs hit the shelves. Our scripting engines will be ready to load those alternate schemas. This will mean that even initially for 5 Volume II labs, you could basically work each one a total of 4 times, and still have a unique and challenging experience each time - giving you the simulation of 20 labs. And when we finish the other 5 labs in a month or so, you will have something akin to 40 unique lab-trying experiences to go on. We really believe this will prepare you to a much greater degree, and give you a much better chance at making your next attempt, your passing one!

 

6) New Web-based Change Function for CUCM BAT Import/Export TAR Files

For every lab I write, whether it be for any one of the 21 new labs in my CCIE Voice Volume I Workbook, or for any of our new labs in our CCIE Voice Volume II Workbook, I always include both "Startup" and "Final" configuration files, and not only for the routers and switches, but also for the CUCM server in the form of BAT Import CSV TAR files. Unfortunately, not everyone that uses our configurations (whether on racks or their own) uses the same phones that I do, and if you use even a slightly different phone type (say a 7961G-GE instead of a 7961G), then CUCM shudders at the thought of the importation. This causes many issues for anyone trying to load our final configs to have a look at what I did for a particular lab's final configurations, and even prevents (or would prevent) someone from loading an initial configuration where I have phones pre-registered (just as the real lab does) in some of my upcoming labs to be released. So what we decided to do, was to provide a web page where, before downloading a particular lab's startup or final configuration, you could choose to input your own Phone Types and Phone MAC Addresses, and then click download, and have our scripts go through and sanitize the initial/final configurations, and present you with the new configurations that will be more specific to the phones you are using -- either with our racks or your own.

 

7) Free Personal Lab License for the Web-based Variphy Insight Remote Phone Control for INE Customers

The kind folks at Variphy have told me that they wish to extend their phenomenal web-based software remote phone control client --which supports SIP and SCCP phones in CUCM, CME and SRST-- to those clients of ours that don't necessarily rent racks from us, but rather have a practice rack of their own equipment. Simply unicast me some mail, and I will be sure to get you the information you need for this limited opportunity. This web-based client for your own lab will allow you to control up to 10 remote IP phones (you have to have real Cisco IP phones to control, this is not a softphone client), and give you some idea of all of the other tremendous capabilities of this software, which in no way is limited to just remote phone control.

 

8) Transcripts Go Live for CCIE Voice Advanced Technologies Class

And finally, As I reported to you a short time ago, we will be releasing the first of our streaming video-on-demand products with transcripts --our highly-acclaimed CCIE Voice Advanced Technologies Class-- in just a few days!

 
The classes are live (for purchase) now, and I will make updates here on the blog when each of the rest of these go live, so stay tuned.