Posts Tagged ‘CWNP’
CWNP Conference Presentations
If it wasn’t Twitter I probably would not have known there was a CWNP conference going on, but luckily we have Twitter. Looks like it was a 3-day conference about all things wireless, I really will try and go next year.
It also looks like they posted the presentations on their website found here, I’ve looked through almost all of the presentations at this point and there are definitely some good ones in there. I hope they take a page from CiscoLive365 and post videos of the actual presentations in the future. Even if there is a small fee they would be worth it (or maybe be available certified CWNP’s?). While you can read through some of the presentations and get some valuable information from them, there are one or two that would probably offer much more insight if you could see/hear the presentation.
I really like Jerome Henry’s presentation on WLAN ‘range’, because believe it or not there are still quite a few people out there that say ‘This AP can cover 1500 sq. ft’, sure maybe it can but what will data rate be and will clients transmission be able to make it back to the AP when they start approaching the edge of the wireless cell?
Jonathan Linton’s VoWLAN, is another good one going over some best practices and design considerations.
There is also a good one on Transmit Beamforming, now I don’t want to re-type the entire page up so go check it out!
Another great 802.11ac video from CWNP.
CWNP has posted a new 802.11ac video over on their YouTube Channel (CWNPTV)
This new video covers Planning for 802.11ac, if you still have not had a chance to go through the IEEE document or mess around with any new 802.11ac equipment this video is worth a play through. It covers the common pitfall of coverage vs capacity (Which does not only pertain to 802.11ac). I’ve seen many places and people simply deploy wireless based on signal strength, and if you have done more than a few wireless deployments you know signal strength & coverage is only half the battle. Capacity and throughput is the other half.
The video was posted almost a week ago and still has less than 200 views, so I am just trying to spread the word. As there are a few other useful videos in that Youtube channel, it’s a worthy resource that should not be overlooked for anyone wanting to be more familiar with 802.11 Wireless.
CWNP’s Intro video to 802.11ac
I was catching up on some of my subscribed YouTube channels this weekend when I checked in on the CWNP TV channel, I then found a new video that was posted by Tom Carpenter just last week. It’s a good 45 minute video that goes over some great fundamental details of the new 802.11ac standard.
It’s definitely worth a listen to if you have not done any other research on 802.11ac and you are curious at how 802.11ac is able achieve its new record of wireless speeds. It also explains that we will see 2 different waves of 802.11ac, wave 1 (going on now) and a wave 2 where will see even more improvements.
Now, I don’t want to ruin anything from the video but you can find the video here.
CWNP Question of the Day
Well, it appears after a few months of visiting CWNP’s website (Yes, even on the weekends) their daily questions have finally started to repeat themselves. I knew it would end eventually and considering the price (free) 3 months of questions is a pretty good deal.
I really recommend anyone who is studying for a CWNP exam (or anything wireless related) to head over to this page and take a shot at the daily question. Don’t let the fact that they are free put you off they are good quality questions, and every question has a detailed explanation so if you get the question wrong or don’t understand it at first the explanation will lead you in the right direction. These questions will also touch on many different topics within the world of wireless, I’ve seen stuff ranging from non-technical security questions to questions concerning the 802.11 frame so this is a quick and dirty way to see inside the CWNP Professional level tracks (CWSP, CWAP, CWDP) just no where near as in-depth.
You can find a link to the CWNP Question of the day right here, their is also a link my Blog Roll. I am going to leave the link in my Blog Roll for any new visitors to find, so it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Hopefully CWNP will update the question as time goes on so we will see.
My thoughts on the CWTS exam from CWNP.
Last week I went ahead and took the CWTS (Certified Wireless Technical Specialist) exam from the CWNP group, now I know they consider this almost a “sales” certification but I wanted to start with this exam just to see how the CWNP group present their exams compared to Cisco, Microsoft, RIM, and CompTIA. Well I managed to pass the exam with a 90% (70% is the minimum score required to pass) so I did fairly well on the exam. I did think a few of the questions were not worded in the best way, but it appears I understood what they were asking for.
My primary sources of study was the Official CWTS study guide from CWNP, along with their practice exams hosted off the CWNP website, not to mention a few years of supporting multiple wireless networks. Now I’m not usually one to say “yea get the official study guide you’ll be ok with that” but in this situation I have to recommend the official study guide. It does an amazing job at covering the CWTS exam objectives. Plus I found it a very easy book to read there plenty of clear concise explanations with enough images that promote the text (Images also span between some of major WLAN equipment vendors Cisco, Proxim, Motorola, etc). The only downside I found concerns the material on the CD that is included with the book. While it does come with sample tests and flash cards I found a few of the questions to be incorrect, another reason to purchase the online practice tests.
Now the material on this exam are the fundamental basics of a WLAN (pertaining to the 802.11 standards, the RF spectrum, and WLAN hardware) and because of that I really do recommend this to any type IT professional who is new to working with WLANs. Whether you are help desk/field technician or even a network administrator that needs to support/implement a new WLAN this book does deserve at least one look over. When I first started working with WLANs I would have loved to have this book it would have saved me hours of research back then. However if you are like me and you have plenty of experience with wireless already I would skip the CWTS and go straight for the CWNA certification.
Now that’s a rap for the CWTS, considering my experience with this exam and the material, I will be pursuing my CWNA certification later on this year but I want to squeeze in a lot of study time for the CCDA exam before Cisco retires the 640-863 April 30th. It’s a certification I tried pursuing a long time ago but just never dedicated that much time to, however between then and now I’ve read many Cisco design guides and both 640-863 Cisco Press books. So if you notice my upcoming entries leaning more towards network design consideration that’s why.
CCIE or Null! 