Expert's answer

KD:

Having your CCNA certainly wouldn't hurt: It'll help give you a good grounding in the OSI model, the math you will need to be comfortable with in handling a network of any size, the basics of routing, etc.

There are several areas that you can look at moving onto from there. Which ones will depend on your focus in VoIP and the the hardware that you will be running it on.

Cisco has several options worth considering. A newly announced certification, CCNA Voice, might be the next step - you'll need to have your CCNA for this. CCNA Wireless starts to move you into VoIP specific parts of Cisco Unified Messaging. Depending on how far you want to take it, at least on the Cisco side of things, you can then look at CCVP, which is a series of 4 exams taking you deeper into the VoIP world.

There are a host of other VOIP related certifications that you can pursue from companies such as CompTIA, Lucent and Alcatel. What you should consider pursuing will depend in part as to what hardware platforms you plan on being involved with or would like exposure to.