CIPT2 Cleared

     Well I took my CIPT2 exam yesterday and cleared it, just barely.  That exam was much harder than CIPT1 and covered less material.  I think the thing about CIPT2 is SAF and CCD is big.  Even though I have never used and will likely never use SAF and CCD, especially since it is no longer being developed, it is on the test.  Globalized dial plans are fairly simple and straight forward and understanding TEHO should be second nature to anyone in the VoIP business.

With all that being said here is a list of things you really need to be on the top of your game on.

1. CCD/SAF configuration and theory.
2. Multisite dial-plans and how to normalize/globalize the numbers inbound and outbound.
3. Media Resources played a small role for me on my exam.
4. Dial-plans...did I say dial-plans?  Please make sure you understand every aspect of a dial-plan.
5. CAC both gatekeeper based and local to CUCM as well as the bandwidth for common codecs to include your layer 2 and layer 3 portions.
6. Mobility and how logging in one location can be different than another based on criteria such as location and subnet.  This is a key portion to understand.

     I know most of that is the blueprint on Cisco's site but it really gets detailed.  I kept hitting diagram after diagram on scenarios which took some considerable time.  The problem is, the screen is not big and you can't fit everything on one page which makes you click between the different diagrams and configurations.  This can get a bit irritating since you have to keep bouncing around so the more you know and are comfortable with the material the better.

     That being said, I feel that CIPT2 would be great for a design engineer in a multi-site environment or someone supporting that style deployment.  I have almost never dealt with intercluster trunks as everything is centralized to keep things simple.  Even when I worked at Cisco and we had over 3000 telepresence endpoints alone across the globe, we were centralized.  Sure we might have had a CUCM elsewhere within the cluster but the bandwidth was so highspeed that it was under the 80ms required for database replication.

     CBT Nuggets did a pretty good job at preparing me for the small things I didn't already know.  Some of the stuff was incredibly easy since I do this for a living while the other stuff like CCD/SAF with the appropriate trunking was a bit more difficult.