CWNA Notes

Hi, the purpose of this section is to provide my own experience over the CWNA.

For those who are not familiar with the CWNA please visit the foillowing link :
https://www.cwnp.com/certifications/cwna

If you really want to learn about Wireless but have no idea what is the OSI model, what is 802.11 or 802.3, no idea what is a VLAN nor a gateway, please start with the CWTS

If you are on this page I assume that you are somehow preparing for the CWNA or interested about it.

I will try to keep it short for those of you who are preparing for the exam,

1 : Just take a moment to go and read the exams objectives ! (you will find it under the CWNA section of the CWNP Web-site. Keep a copy of it (printed or spreadsheet doc)

2 : Buy the Official Study Guide and read it. (Check for the current version)

3 : Read the Official Study guide again and take notes ! and read it AGAIN, just to make sure !

4 : Ideally trying to discuss what you learned or even teach it to someone who's preparing the CWNA would be a nice exercice because how could you explain and teach a technology on which you don't really feel confident. On the CWNA I must say that you won't have much to teach if you are new to wireless but you will certainly have a good understanding of 802.11 subject to discuss with others.

5 : Keep it up and read some white papers from CWNP and Aruba (do your home work, don't expect me to spoon feed you with all the links there are things you need to learn on your own), watch videos about 802.11, follow people from the Wireless community on Twitter. I did all of that and here is my list of books.
Sybex CWNA Official Study Guide (as for today current version of the exam: ISBN:1119067766)
O'REILLY 802.11 Wireless Networks 2nd edition by Matthew S. Gast ISBN:0596100523 (a bit outdated but this is extremely good materials for understanding the basics of the 802.11 standards, it will provide a good refresh + detailed sections compared to the CWNA official study guide.

And the best for the end:
O'REILLY 802.11n A Survival Guide by Matthew S. Gast ISBN:1449312047
O'REILLY 802.11ac A Survival Guide by Matthew S. Gast ISBN:1449343147
Seriously I was a bit disapointed by the CWNA study guide for covering the 802.11n and 802.11ac. You HAVE to buy these for sure. If you are serious about your career with wireless networks then do yourself a favor and get these two when buying the CWNA study guide.

Optional: Go on the IEEE standards and print the entire 802.11-2012 amendment (no I am kidding, just print section 4 and 5, don't print the entire standards it will drive you insane and it's too advanced as an entry level learning).
Mc Graw Hill CWNA official study guide (This is a 8 years old study guide but it is just an opportunity to have more questions to review)

6 : Do not hesitate to seek for flashcards and look for CWNA study group or google+ pages.

7 : This is more a personal opinion as I see a lot of people recommending to do the chapters question reviews till your reach 90% and buying the self-paced training kit from CWNP and work it hard to reach +90 marking. I have nothing against the idea of reaching high 90's but I highly recommend to not over practice the questions because you'll just learn the answer even if you don't want it. My opinion is for each questions you're facing you should be able to not only find the right answers, you should be able to give a brief explantation or have a clear idea of the reason why to pick or not pick one the proposed answer. Once you're reaching that level you can certainly go take the exam without any fear but trust me there is a long way of reading and taking notes before reaching that level.

The current version of the Official study guide has 20 chapters, times 20 questions.
There is an assessment test of 40 questions so you will find a total of 440 questions in that book.
If you buy the book you will have access to their online interface where you have all the questions from the book plus flashcards.
In my case I made a spreadsheet and used a lot of colors.
During my preparation for the exam I had a fair idea of my weaknesses on some of the topics. This spreadsheet helped me to take down notes and nailing down weaknesses on certains areas. (If you're looking for a way to get depressingly disgusted about how weak your 802.11 knowledge is, go ahead your spreadsheet will look all red like mine did :). ALL I KNOW IS, you will read over and over again and then you'll be curious and that is how you will learn)

Don't look for excuses ! I can find some good ones, with my sleeping apneas even if I have a CPAP machine I barely use because it cause me so many issues with my teeth. This causes me to have a terrible time when it comes to memory retention not to mention that I fall asleep at every two sentences. I could say that English is not my first language, I could say that life is getting in the way, I could be out fishing right now or there is a new episode of whatever series,
If you're discouraged by the volume of information you have to learn then find a way to motivate yourself, reward yourself at the end of each chapters ! Watch some motivational speech on youtube, think about a better future.
If you still think it is a lot of useless informations on the CWNA and you are not enjoying your time then I can only recommend you to re-think your career choice because Wireless and anything related to computers in general, isn't going to get any easier.

Plan your learning schedule, pick a date range for you exam, write it down and make it happen !

Thanks for reading,
Ben