This article will be about my path to CWNA, and hopefully a stepping stone for what lies beyond. However, I also include some study tips that worked for me along the way. If you are working toward CWNA, please let me know if you find this helpful!

Beginning

About a year ago, I set out to get more familiar with wireless design, deployment, and troubleshooting. In the past when I wanted to learn the basics of networking, I followed recognized certification paths.

After looking around at what was out there for certification tracks, I came across the material from CWNP which appeared to be the best recognized certification out there for wireless professionals. Better yet, it was taught from a vendor-neutral perspective, so no worry about learning anything too proprietary.

Aside – I’ve gone through several certification programs, mostly Cisco, and I always fought for the idea that the basics were the same whether it was vendor-specific or vendor-neutral. However, when I got to the CCIE level, Cisco had just revised CCIE R&S to 5.0, and the horror stories of specific Cisco-centric command defaults and “new” technologies that haven’t made it in the industry really turned me off.

I spent about 18 months reading the CCIE recommended materials, but for me it was too much when I never used 80% of it day to day. In the end, I lost all motivation for continuing, and I stopped doing certifications for a good 3-4 years. Now when it came to starting up again, I wasn’t against using Cisco or some other vendor’s material, but finding that CWNP was vendor-neutral was a breath of fresh air.

Take away – I understand the value of both vendor-specific and vendor-neutral, but my default now is to go vendor-neutral if it’s available.

Materials

I purchased the CWNA-106 Official Study Guide by David D. Coleman (CWNE #4) and David A. Westcott (CWNE #7) toward the end of 2017 and slowly read the materials.

The basic wireless topics were presented with the kind of clarity I, as a technical person, could understand quite well. I’m not sure how well it would work for someone without the networking background I have, but it worked for me.

However, it didn’t take long for things to slow down quite a lot. I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of TLAs (three-letter acronyms), FLAs (four-letter acronyms), and sometimes SLAs (service-level agreements… wait no, six-letter acronyms…) that flooded the text.

I had to just take my time reading it, sometimes multiple times, and looking up supplemental material (like just reading the Wikipedia articles for example) to understand what was going on. It was all new to me, and the fundamentals are hard to learn when you’re just starting.

Note – When reading material with a lot of acronyms, here is what I do: whenever you see the acronym written down in a paragraph, actually say the full decoding, in your head or out loud, EVERY TIME. This is the only way I’ve found to pick up on complex or nested acronyms quickly. You’re training your brain to actually know what orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing is instead of just memorizing that OFDM was used in 802.11a. (Also, CCMP scared me and I wouldn’t have learned it otherwise.) Trust me, it helps.

One other thing I learned from my CCIE studies – an expert knows things. It’s silly to say it that way, but you know an expert when you see one. So, I like to try to find things in material I’m reading that an expert would know from memory, that perhaps a non-expert may not.

I decided that one of these things is at least a summary knowledge of each 802.11 amendment, even the uncommon ones. It was presented in the text, so I made it a goal to learn them.

I created flash cards for each amendment, along with a few others like frequency ranges, and went through them regularly. I never could get through them 100%, but I plan to keep working on it.

Training Take Away – Site Surveys

In the past, I had a couple clients ask for site surveys, but I felt that they were mostly unnecessary, and would only be nice in larger deployments or unique use cases. If it works, why me worry?

However, I realize my thinking on this was mostly due to lack of exposure. In small offices, you can throw up an access point or two and it will be fine. But, as I was starting to get familiar with wireless technology, I saw how taking a more data-driven approach from requirements planning, design, and all the way through operations/troubleshooting is worth the effort.

Looking around at wireless survey software, I settled on Ekahau Site Survey (ESS). Their webinars are always insightful and practical, and you can tell they are a growing company wanting to be a global thought leader in wireless technology. I asked to get the software in the budget for this year, as well as the Ekahau Certified Survey Engineer (ECSE) course. It was approved, but the purchase would wait until the need arose.

Break from the Books

Unfortunately, I got about half way through the book, and then life happened. I still wanted to develop my wireless knowledge and get more into wireless deployments, but the studies were limited to mostly webinars and other easy to consume material.

Knowledge Incoming…

A Quick Turnaround

Fast forward 4 months, and I had the opportunity to work on a few wireless projects, one of them quite large. This kicked me into gear. I purchased ESS and signed up for the ECSE training. It turned out, CWNA was actually a highly-recommended prerequisite, not required but definitely helpful.

I was half way there, and now I had 6 weeks to finish up.

A little unsure whether it was possible, I started reading again. To my surprise, I had stopped right on the cusp of where the material got a lot more practical, and my past experience helped out tremendously.

I flew through the text, much of which I was able to fit in missing pieces from previous wireless deployments. I ended up getting through the second half of the book in about 3 weeks, well ahead of my schedule.

Note – I found when learning best practices I tended to think back at what I’d done wrong on wireless projects in the past. Sometimes I even felt a little guilty. If this happens to you as well, don’t worry about it, just keep looking forward and know that your experience was just a stepping stone to where you are now. If you made a mistake, remember it and don’t do it next time! After all, recognizing it as a mistake is a perfect example of how your learning is working!

Practice Exams

After finishing the book, I went to look at what practice exams were out there. It turned out the exam was recently revised to CWNA-107. I decided this wasn’t a big deal, and I just looked up some of the differences. The truth is, the CWNA-106 book was so good at teaching the basics (and really, that’s what the exams are for anyway), the changes weren’t hard to learn at all. A lot of it was just rearranged, not really new.

I started with the practice exams that came with the book. I was pleasantly surprised how much of the early material I remembered. Some of it, like converting units like dBm/dBi/dBd/mW had to be reviewed, but the gist of it was pretty good. Still, I’ve learned from experience that the exams that come with the book don’t necessarily match up with the actual exam.

The next step was to get the official CWNP-provided practice exam, which I purchased with the CWNA exam voucher. The CWNP practice exam is performed on the CWNP website itself, not separate software or anything. I thought this would limit the usability, but it turned out to be just fine.

The CWNP practice test came with two question banks. I took one of them right away, it took about an hour, and amazingly I found it to be (dare I say) easy. The questions felt like good questions, not nitpicky, not misleading, nor multiple choice where you had to pick the “best” answer (ahem, Cisco, ahem, Microsoft), and I just knew the answers.

I felt so optimistic that I scheduled the exam for the next available time, which was in 2 days. Hardly enough time to cancel.

Then the next day, I took the other practice exam. This one was a lot harder and was a lot more technical.

I almost panicked. Perhaps the second question bank was from a different part of the material that I didn’t know as well or forgot about, but I was starting to get discouraged. However, somehow I squeaked out a pass on this second practice test.

I reviewed all the questions from both practice tests and filled in the missing pieces. That’s all I could do.

Exam Day

I’ve taken a lot of certification exams, so I wasn’t nervous at all. I showed up early, joked around a bit with the proctor, and sat the test.

Note – If you get nervous before an exam, just relax. You’re there because you’re ready. Even if it doesn’t go your way, take notes of what you didn’t know and try again next time. I’ve failed a LOT of exams in the past… don’t remind me. 🙂

The exam was 90 minutes, 60 questions. That’s one question every minute and a half. In other words, I should be at question 20 by the 1 hour mark, and question 40 by the 30-minute mark.

One note on the exam timer – It started at the beginning of the instructions and did not reset when Question 1 came up. Not a big deal, I only lost a couple minutes (because I always read through the instructions, especially since this is the first CWNP exam I’ve taken), but in almost every other exam I’ve taken, reading the instructions does not count against your time. Maybe this can be a suggestion to CWNP folks. Just keep this in mind and move on, there’s plenty of time.

Working through the exam, I have to say, I was impressed. The actual exam was a nice summarization of the blueprint, and between the book, the supplemental material, and the practice tests, I was prepared. About half way through, I knew I was going to nail it. Sure enough, when the test was over, PASS.

Next Goals

Now that I’ve gotten through the fundamentals of wireless, I want to keep going with Certified Wireless Design Professional (CWDP). I also have a couple other certs to renew over the next 6 months, but I think I can keep the CWDP book handy and see how it goes.

Eventually, I think CWNE is a real possibility. Wireless is still exciting to me, so I have no plans to stop.

I might even take the HAM radio exams just for fun! 🙂 Can any hams out there comment on how/if CWNA relates?

Anyone else have advice for CWNA candidates? Advice for CWNP/CWNE prep? Would love to hear it.