It's been a rough year of study. Granted I didn't study hard every day since I do this for a living but it's still been some dedication to get to where I am now. After ten years in the business I'm finally certified at the NP Voice level. For all of you aspiring engineers, you have it a little bit better as you won't need CCNA Data anymore to obtain a CCNA Collaboration (the new voice track). that comes at the expense of you need to know more stuff and missing out on the data side is going to hinder you which is why I would still recommend having a CCNA so you at least know what a gateway and switch are.
With all of that aside, I feel that the exams were mostly difficult but not impossible. CIPT2 was the hardest one to pass despite me failing CIPT1. I think it's more of where you are in your career and what you mess with on a daily basis that defines what topics are hard. For instance, SAF and CCD are hardly ever used, in fact SAF is being phased out as it is no longer developed from the discussions that I have read. ILS is going to be taking its place however, so don't think you are skipping by on something.
I think the biggest topics you really need to understand are the dial-plans and the media resources between CIPT1, CIPT2, and TVOICE. If you arn't familiar with these aspects you will surely fail as they are the meat and potatoes of the Call Manager. CVOICE and the gateways are equally important but with the new tracks out, they are starting to take a backseat as the focus is on GUI driven objects and understand how they work. My biggest issue with this is, new engineers won't know how to configure a gateway for SIP, H.323, or MGCP. I know T1s are going the way of the dinosaur but that doesn't mean you can skip on that information, especially if you are in a MGCP environment.
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