Vendor-neutral. Carrier-grade. Credentialed.
SIP Train is online certification training for carrier voice engineers, UCaaS engineers, and enterprise voice architects who learn from the RFCs, not the vendor brochures. Three credentials — CVA, CVP, CCVE — built around the protocols, packets, and call flows you actually deal with at 2am.
No Cisco-only, Avaya-only, or carrier-of-the-week curriculum. SIP Train teaches the protocols themselves — SIP, RTP, RTCP, SDP, SS7/SIGTRAN, BGP-over-voice edge cases — so the knowledge holds whichever vendor stack you walk into next.
Every course is built around real PCAPs, real SDP exchanges, and real call-flow diagrams. You finish a SIP Train module able to read a trace fluently, not just able to recite definitions.
SIP Train is built and curated by Andrew Ward of Award Consulting — a carrier and SBC engineer with deep experience across SS7/SIGTRAN, hosted PBX and UCaaS deployments. It's the course material we wished existed.
The SIP Train credential ladder
Certified VoIP Associate
The fundamentals: SIP messages, transactions, dialogs, registration, media negotiation. Two courses (SIPT-101 and SIPT-102), proctored exam.
SIPT-101 outlineCertified VoIP Professional
Media transport at depth: RTP, RTCP, SRTP, jitter buffers, codec interop, SBC architecture and topology hiding. Two courses, lab-driven.
Track overviewCertified Carrier Voice Engineer
Carrier-class voice: SS7, ISUP, SIGTRAN, M3UA, IMS interworking, number portability, regulatory routing. The capstone for telco engineers.
Track overviewPhase 1 catalog
The first SIP Train release covers the entire CVA, CVP, and CCVE ladder. Each course is text-first and trace-driven, with a built-in AI tutor that knows where you are in the curriculum and answers in protocol-level detail.
9 modules, 41 lessons, ~7.5h of structured content. Architecture, headers, transactions, dialogs, REGISTER and digest auth, SDP basics, troubleshooting, and a full CVA exam-prep module.
View outline → CVA · Available at launchPRACK and 100rel, REFER and call transfer, Replaces semantics, SUBSCRIBE/NOTIFY for BLF and presence, session timers, CANCEL/BYE edge cases. The second half of the CVA track.
View outline →Codec selection, RTP packet format, RTCP SR/RR analysis, RTT calculation, jitter buffer dynamics, SRTP keying, comfort noise and DTX behaviour.
SBC topology hiding, NAT traversal, transcoding economics, header manipulation, failover modes, vendor-agnostic SBC operations and capacity planning.
ISUP and IAM/ACM/ANM, SIGTRAN M3UA, SCTP, IP-STP architecture, MAP for SMS, and SIP–ISUP interworking the way carriers actually do it.
Number portability, IMS architecture, regulatory routing constraints, fraud patterns, capacity and cost engineering for tier-1 carrier voice.
Why text-first beats video for protocol training
Real INVITE messages, SDP offers, and PCAP-derived ladder diagrams — with field-by-field annotation you can scan, search, and copy. No fast-forwarding through a 12-minute video to find the moment that matters.
Every lesson page has an AI tutor with full context of the lesson, your progress, and the rest of the curriculum. Ask it why your trace is doing something weird and you'll get a protocol-level answer, not a generic chatbot reply.
Because content lives as text, errata fix in hours, not in re-record cycles. A new BCP comes out on a Tuesday; the relevant lessons reflect it by Friday.
From the SIP Train blog
The INVITE state machine, the retransmission timers you actually need to memorise, and the difference between 2xx ACK and non-2xx ACK that catches engineers out.
Read → Week 3 · Media transportReading SR/RR fluently — jitter in RTP units, RTT from LSR/DLSR, and what to do when your trace shows two RTCP packets in a 30-second call.
Read →Browse the full course catalog, see what's available at launch, and what's queued up next.
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