atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Good Books for a Voice Newbie

I need help finding a good book or two that will teach me the basics of voice administration. I'm I am an experienced IT tech, but have no experience in the Voice world. I read the Avaya IP Office Manager manual today, but found it lacking in several key areas. Are there any good books that are generally recommended for newbies? I'm very technically oriented, and am not afraid to dive into a reference manual if need be. I'm looking for best practices information as well as info speficially related to Avaya IP Office switches (we have a 412).

I looked at Amazon and O'Reilly (usually a good place to start in the desktop PC world), but didn't find much except a Dummies guide, which I tend to avoid (though in this case I might give it a whirl).

Thanks for any suggestions!

I tell you a book I still spend a lot of time in is the Newton's Telecom Dictionary.

Lots of info.

If all you are concerned about is the IP Office then you need to be trained on that product. Avaya would be the place to start.

Understand that the IPO as well as the other competing IP products are a radical departure from the traditional voice world. IP systems have been designed for people like you with IT experience so understanding them should be relatively easy given your background and voice experience is not a prerequisite.

Unless you plan on getting into other traditional types of systems most information relating to traditional voice practices isn't going to be of much help to you here but it's always nice to learn as much as you can.

If you want to learn about wiring I would recommend BICSI (bicsi.org) though I would take their specifications very lightly. Old timers like myself don't completely agree with some of their recommendations.

Newton's Telcom Dictionary is good if you want to find out what an acronym stands for but not much else.

As far as telephone theory and practices there isn't anything available that I know of except the excellent training material by ABC Teletraining. I bought a whole set from them many years ago and I don't know if they are even published anymore.

Their material covers everything from switching design background, grounding and protectors, station installation and maintenance, station protectors, noise reduction, power line interference and solutions, transmission systems, data transmission (which is probably very dated) and much more.

If anybody is interested I believe ABC Teletraining is still in existance.

-Hal

You could do some searches on sandman.com he has some good material on theory.

Newton's Telcom Dictionary is good if you want to find out what an acronym stands for but not much else.

I may be wrong here but won't that be like telling someone that is wanting to learn english they didn't need a dictionary?

Newton's Telecom Dictionary is certainly a worthwhile addition to any bookshelf but it's hardly a reference for the information needed to perform most day to day tasks in this trade.

I have always owned a copy and to tell the truth I can count on one hand how many times I have found it useful. It for sure is fun reading if for nothing more than the answers to just about any telecom acronym trivia.

-Hal

One of the best web sites that I have found for telephony information belongs to one of our members. www.samhassan.com has telecom information and theory and goes into detail and history on a huge variety of topics.

Barb

I second the Newton's. I mostly learned by cleaning up other people's messes, hanging with oldtimers and reading web sites like this one, Telecom Digest, and Tek-Tips.

Manufacturer's websites have collections of white papers. I particularly like Cisco's instructional material - the paper on Traffic Engineering and VoIP is pure gold.

(https://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk652/tk701/technologies_white_paper09186a00800d6b74.shtml)

Seems to me, you learn what you need to learn when you need to learn it - the JIT method. My textbook of choice is usually Google.

Good luck!

jsaxe

This site is fairly simple yet pretty good.
https://www.jimhayes.com/uncleted/index.html

DnRComm, is that the same Jim Hayes up in New England that used to have the fiber optic company and association? If so, he sold out to Fluke. He was GOOD.

ABC used to be a good standard.

IP Office isn't telephone --- it's computers for CGs.

KLD