Cisco VOICE over IP (CVOICE) exam represents one of the building blocks of few Cisco VoIP certifications; CCVP, Cisco IP Communications Support Specialist, and Cisco Rich Media Communications Specialist.

As I speak of any exam here, I am not stating a way of passing the exam and taking the certification only, but stating the best way I think possible to gain knowledge while preparing for the exams.

The current CVOICE exam, 642-432, assures that the candidate has a very good basic knowledge of telephony in general and IP-Telephony in specific. This exam covers a wide range of topics that are essential for professionals working with Cisco VoIP devices and VoIP in general.

Cisco Press has introduced a good book that I would adopt in self-study and preparation for the CVOICE exam. This book, Cisco Voice over IP (CVoice) (Authorized Self-Study Guide), 2nd Edition, introduces the subject in a good and easy-to-master way. The Cisco Press book is also more abstract than the original course materials prepared for CVOICE courses. I have taken a thorough look into the book and upon that I made the following schedule divided by days:

1. Chapter 1: Basic components of telephony networks, fundamentals of packet telephony networks, and IP telephony applications.

2. Chapter 2: Analog voice fundamentals and analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog voice encoding.

3. Chapter 2: Signaling systems and Enabling VoIP Fax and Modem transmission

4. Chapter 3: Voice Interfarce configuration

5. Chapter 4:Configuring Dial peers

6. Chapter 4: Configuring Dial peers and Lab excercises

7. Chapter 5: Understanding VoIP requirements and VoIP Network architectures

8.Chapter 5: Building Scalable dial plans and scalable dial plans

9. Chapter 5: Scalable dialing plans and lab exercise

10. Chapter 6: The need for signaling and call control and H.323 concepts and configuration.

11. Chapter 6: MGCP concepts and configuration

12. Chapter 6: Comparing call control models and Lab exercise for H.323 Gatekeeper

13. Chapter 7: Optimizing voice quality, AutoQos, and Implementing call admission control

14. Review of chapters 1, 2, 5, and 6 (without Lab exercises)

15. Review of chapters 3, 4, 7 with lab exercises (including chapter 6 lab exercise)

In this schedule I assumed that you have time to study for 180 to 210 minutes daily so you would stay in touch with the subject and not affect your other duties like work.

And as far as practice and labs are concerned, I strongly recommend having a voice-enabled router around to practice on it. Maybe you could lease one or buy a cheap second-handed one. It's a necessary part of the preparation for the exam as well as for the real life work.

After stating the schedule, we should talk a little bit about the exam itself. The exam usually consists of 55 to 65 questions, to be solved in 75 minutes. These questions contain multiple-choice-single-answer questions, multiple-choice-multiple-answer questions, simlets, ..etc. Try to read the questions thoroughly so you wouldn't need to read them again. The answers might sometimes be deceptive and you find more than one answer to be likely correct. To get over this, solve the question in the opposite way, i.e., eliminate the likely wrong answers until you reach the correct one.

My advice for every exam is DO NOT study for at least 12 hours before the exam time. You will get exhausted and loose concentration.

Good Luck!

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