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I passed today after about 6 weeks of on and off studying. I will post my thoughts and comments shortly..

Way to go!!!! Congratulations on your achievement.

/JS

Post your thoughts you studied like a mad man and shared with us a lot of good points. You definitely deserve a BIG Congratulations!

compughter

Okay folks, here it is. I passed this exam today but just barley. I got a 75%. I started studying in November for two weeks then stopped, picked it up again in December for two week and then stopped due to holidays and business obligations. Studied for the last two weeks. So all in all I probably put in only 6 weeks into it.

Regardless of the score or if you pass or take the test two or three times. IT IS DEFINATLY WORTH IT!!!!!. YOU WILL LEARN A LOT!!!!

Now for some of my criticism.

Yes I could have studied longer and maybe harder but I was just starting to reject this stuff and getting sick of it so I took the exam.

The CWAP study guide was the main source and is very helpful but fighting the errors and some contradictions vs. what is in the standards and other books can cause a person to learn one item and maybe know three different answers for it in case it appears on the exam. You know this by my posts and others as well. I also found some things in the practice tests. I have a screen shot or two I can send to you. Some practice questions had the same answers twice etc..

Disclaimer the examples I cite here are not exactly what was on the exam but just broad enough to give you an idea of the issues I encountered.

My biggest gripe about the exam in general is that the exam’s subjective type questions for the analysis and analyzer use are, and I am sorry, just a mess and confusing.

There are just too many subjective questions that can confuse you. Some of them in the PHY areas of the exam also.

For example my scores show that for the definite operational type of questions where the facts are the facts like Mac frames etc I scored into the 80s. This shows I know the protocol etc. But for the real world sections I got into the 50s.

I also got into the 50s for the PHY but there were some messed up questions there as well.(see the comments from prometric)One question talked about the length field in the plcp header. Asked if it is in microseconds, octets, etc?? The study guide refers to both. Microseconds in the length portion of the phy chapter and in other areas of the book it is in octets.

Most of the problems I was fighting with the exam were the subjective nature of the questions that I believe should be cleaned up and more specific.

[deleted due to NDA violation]

Fighting through theses kinds of things made me crazy…. Frame size expansion, but don’t mention with or without or due encryption etc.

I did finish with 25 minutes to spare so I went back through each questions and left a LOT of comments so you could see what I am talking about.

Now since the exam questions do not reveal answers to previous questions and if you still want to keep this subjective questioning in place without tighten up the questions a little bit, then I would ask if you could allow the tester to mark and go back to review again.

I know I am not a rocket scientist and I could have studied more to possibly get a better score but I think/believe that the exam should be tough just based on the specific and defined facts of the protocol and protocol operation and not be difficult from the confusing and subject nature of real world analysis approaches. I did discuss that in another thread a couple of months ago.

If you see other testers with lower scores on the real world and performance stuff then maybe you should consider tightening up the questions for more clarity…

Like I said before it was very very good to go through and definatly worth it. Please don’t take this personally and shoot the messenger here for their opinion or dcert. me :) . The study guide is an awesome guide and reference but a cleaned up and next revision guide has the potential to be one of the all time great tech books out there. That is why I and others worked hard to point out these things, make diagrams and maybe tables to sort out all the bits and bytes and share them with everyone.

I like the CWNP program and look forward to its success for if the CWNP program is successful then I am successful..

Again the exam is respectivly tough and tough enough on the technical content but the subjective stuff has to be clearer. It is defiantly not brain dumpable and worthy to achieve.

Nevertheless, IT WAS WELL WORTH IT AND I WOULD DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN.

I LEARNED A LOT AND WILL APPLY THIS NEW KNOWLEDGE.

WELL DONE AGAIN ON ANOTHER GREAT GUIDE AND LOOK FORWARD TO MORE.

VENT OVER!!!

I used the CWAP guide, read it like 4 times, the cisco press book, read it 4 times(once last year) I used the airopeek CWAP keyed version of Ariopeek and used a CWAP discounted RF grabber from network chemistry as my main capture analyzer and WIDS. I had a lab of B and G access points and created a little CWAP trace library. I have a lot of traces of interesting b and g packets and protocol mechanics/transactions that I would love to share with the folks here.

I am considering putting them up on my site or make the files just downloadable for the folks who are short on time and can benefit from them. I created some diagrams which were helpful in visualizing the frame structures and of course all the feedback from Criss, Kevin, Devin was priceless. Plus, all the other posts from the other CWAP candidates helped too. I will try to updated the diagrams and post them for everyone to use.. I only did the practices like 5 times.

Thanks to all here for the help..

Good luck to everybody else. Now on to CWSP, CCSP, CCIP and IP Telephony Specialist.

Jsicuran - CWNA, CWAP, CCNP, CCDP, PMG Netanalyst, CNX, CNE, Oracle Master DBM and CASE, IBM Token-Ring, EIEIO

Thanks for posting your thoughts on this exam. This should help me out. I am interested in your trace files if you do indeed share them. I do not have an 802.11g ap so I cannot readily capture traces for 802.11g. I have the ciscopress 802.11 wireless lan fundamentals book and it shows alot of good traces. That is one complaint on the study guide is the lack of protocol decode diagrams.

I assume that the test results now show your scores on different subject areas of the exam. That is good for future reference if needed.

Hi Jeff:

Congratulations on passing!

The subjective nature of the exam, though confusing, is one of its strengths. It models the challenges faced by analysts.

Analysts receive incomplete and imperfect information and have to sift through the nonsense while juggling a pile of facts believed to be true about how 802.11 things are supposed to work.

The correct answer to a subjective question is often found by fetching and applying one pertinent fact. Don't know or fetch the right one and confusion reigns.

Thanks. /criss

Hi Jeff:

The study guide could be clearer regarding which PHYs use a PLCP length sub field to store microseconds and which to store octets.

It has been theorized that those PHYs that store microseconds are open to a particular hack that would not apply to the other PHYs.

Thanks. /criss

The subjective nature of the exam, though confusing, is one of its strengths. It models the challenges faced by analysts.

Analysts receive incomplete and imperfect information and have to sift through the nonsense while juggling a pile of facts believed to be true about how 802.11 things are supposed to work.

Well if that is the intended purpose then you guys acheived it big time!! Bravo!! It was difficult and yes frustrating but it does make for a better analyst afterwords.

I do agree with your statements above and your are so right. However, how much of that is "testable" as compared to the real world? In the real world you have the juggeling of facts and nonsense but you have your individual experience(which will be different for each test taker) in terms of how to deal with the juggeling of information and nonsense.

I may be better with some facts and personally(honed from experience) use a different(non fridnedly test appraoch)for the "analysis" questions to pass and another guy may be weaker with the facts but happens to personally use(from his experience) a (test friendly approach) to pass.

I understand that there is a "critical thinking" element to the exam and that does make this certification much more valuable than just a facts based one in some ways. I could say with the critical thinking and fact elements this exam alone is harder than the ccie written for example.

I know I am splitting hairs and we had this discussion before on another thread months ago.

Nontheless, it does add a challange and that makes it worth it. Your exam did acheive its goals for me. I learn a hell of a lot from it and had fun so thanks guys.

I still cannot wait to see how you are going to do the CWNE. I am looking forward to that one.

Thanks again Criss, Devin, Kevin and gang for your help.

badger11 Escribió:

Thanks for posting your thoughts on this exam. This should help me out. I am interested in your trace files if you do indeed share them. I do not have an 802.11g ap so I cannot readily capture traces for 802.11g. I have the ciscopress 802.11 wireless lan fundamentals book and it shows alot of good traces. That is one complaint on the study guide is the lack of protocol decode diagrams.

I assume that the test results now show your scores on different subject areas of the exam. That is good for future reference if needed.

badger11, I am working on getting them onlie for the community here to use. I just haven't decided on how to do it. Just an ftp site or a page with each trace name clearly spelled out for its use and a link to download.

I have stuff with the dtim perid set to 3 and you can watch it the dtim count down et. al. I do have like 5 different ERP element combinations.

barker set alone
non erp set alone
protection set alone
and then a combination of each elemement set togeather, (I don't recall if I have all 3 set)
with different slots and preambles set.

I wanted to make a table so that just by looking at the bit combinations in the erp IE or in the capabilities fixed IE. I could derive the pertinant modulation, slot time, preambles and other "hints".

Okay badger11 and gang here is the ftp link for all of my study trace files. They were created in Airopeek so you can read them in Airopeek or Network Chemistry's Packetyzer.

ftp://ftp.amilabs.com/


You can use your browser or something like WS_FTP pro to go get them.

The location is setup for Anonymous users.

Have fun..