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(Cross Posted from the CWNP Blog)

[b]The Sybex Official CWDP Study Guide Is Here
[/b]
The CWDP Study Guide, the most thorough and comprehensive book to date devoted to the proper design of enterprise Wi-Fi networks, is now available at cwnp.com for $41.00, and includes the official CWDP practice test.

The authors and editors have outdone themselves in creating this 900-page beast of a Wi-Fi design reference guide. Big, huge shout outs to?

[b]The authors:
[/b]
* Shawn Jackman, Kaiser Permanente (CWNE)
* Marcus Burton, CWNP (CWNE)
* Matt Swartz, Cisco (CCIE R/S & Wireless, CWNE)
* Tom Head, VP of Engineering, Reverb Networks

[b]The Technical Editors:
[/b]
* Jennifer Huber, Sigma Solutions, Inc. (CWNE)
* Jerome Henry, FastLane (CWNE, CCIE-Wireless)

And a well deserved THANK YOU to the folks at Wiley Publishing, for making this long-awaited book a reality. You can buy the book here for a little less than at Amazon.com, and you?ll get the Official Practice Test license free with your purchase. If you love reading books like this on Kindle, the CWDP Study Guide is already available in Kindle Edition. We hope you enjoy and are thoroughly challenged by this new comprehensive enterprise Wi-Fi Design book. The new CWAP Study Guide will be available soon.

With the availability of the CWDP Study Guide, we?re also rolling out a few new package deals to help you prep more for less!

[url=http://www.cwnp.com/index/store/kitpw0250]CWDP Self Study Kit[/url]: CWDP study guide, practice test, exam voucher ? $249
[url=http://www.cwnp.com/index/store/designbundle]CWNP Design Bundle[/url]: CWNA + CWDP study guides and practice tests ? $75
[url=http://www.cwnp.com/index/store/securitybundle]CWNP Security Bundle[/url]: CWNA + CWSP study guides and practice tests ? $75

More of these types of bundles are also coming soon?as soon as the CWAP Study Guide is available to ship!

As my simple way of announcing the availability of the Sybex Official CWDP Study Guide, I am posting below the CWDP Study Guide Foreword.

[b]FOREWORD[/b]

So you want to design an enterprise wireless network? ?I can?t connect to the Wi-Fi!? is what you?re going to hear if you don?t get your Wi-Fi right. How do you permanently remove this wonderful end-user complaint from your WLAN? It starts with proper design.

I actually considered starting and ending this foreword to the Official CWDP Study Guide with just the above sentiment. That sums it up, but there is much more to it. Today?s end user just expects the wireless network to work, period. When it doesn?t, customers leave, employees complain, managers scream, and your network is always to blame?even when it isn?t.

A few years ago, before Polycom bought them, SpectraLink ran into quite a few of these complaints, only the complaints were ?These phones don?t work!? and it really was the network. What did SpectraLink do? They created a services team to go in and design and build their customers? WLANs properly, so that the SpectraLink phones running on those WLANs would work. It wasn?t the phones. It was the network. The network was not properly designed to support Wi-Fi phones. That was 5 years ago. Imagine what the network has to support today, thanks to Mr. Steve Jobs!

Whether you?re designing for a coffee shop hotspot or the SuperBowl?, your design before the network is implemented will determine hero or goat status. The fun part is, much like security, it gets noticed only when it doesn?t work. If everything works flawlessly, you?ve done your job. When you hear that soulful end user scream ? ?mine?s broken!? ? then you know you?ve missed the mark.

So how do you design for something you can?t see? RF is a strange animal indeed, often referred to as black magic or smoke & mirrors, so you must know RF cold. That includes the RF math, behavior, and characteristics, in addition to the building(s) for which you are designing the network. That?s right: you have to know building materials! RF acts differently around cement, metal, drywall, plaster, wood, trees, fences, and yes, people. That?s part of the reason we require CWNA before you can be CWDP. You have to know RF, and you have to know RF really well before you can claim to be a WLAN designer.

And, oh, wouldn?t it be nice if every new WLAN was a sweet new green field implementation? Sorry, not going to happen. You will most likely be replacing an old 802.11b or 802.11g WLAN with an 802.11n system. And wouldn?t it be nice if it were just rip and replace? HA! Life should be so easy! If your manager or your customer suggests rip and replace, you?d do well to suggest that they find someone else to do this job. That should get someone?s attention. Then it?s your job to explain, for example, how differently an 802.11g network and an 802.11n network behave, not only in that particular environment, but in any environment.
With a/b/g, multipath and interference were the bane of your existence. Now, multipath is good for 802.11n Wi-Fi. That means a complete change in the way you design the WLAN for any environment.

Ah, but we don?t design only for the environment, do we? No, no we don?t. We must design for the specific applications, and the type(s) of and number of devices that will utilize the WLAN, and the specific industry, and the number of end users?the list goes on and on. And then there?s VoWiFi and Video. How many people have you seen watching (fill in the blank) on YouTube on the wireless LAN? Your WLAN has to support that kind of bandwidth, lest you hear the cry of the end-user: ?mine?s broken!?

Reliable enterprise Wi-Fi starts with the design of the wireless network. So where do you start to end up with a great design? You guessed it: your old friend the RF site survey. Missed him, didn?t you? What?s wrong? Haven?t climbed enough towers, scaled enough ceilings, pushed enough carts, dropped enough handhelds, or walked enough miles lately? It?s time to go back to where you started, and improve your game not just a little, but a lot. When you did your first 50 RF site surveys, were you thinking about the design of the network, or were you thinking about getting the survey done as quickly and with as little pain as possible?

Now return to the RF site survey with the ? no, with your ? network design in mind. This time, you?re doing the survey for the purpose of designing a reliable, scalable, secure, mission-critical enterprise wireless LAN. It?s not just Internet access anymore; it is the new access layer technology for the 21st century.

You want to design my wireless network? Start with this book, and see where it takes you.

Sounds GREAT.

I'll take one !

A quick question about the new exam....

My CWNA has expired however I would like to take the CWDP *before* redoing the CWNA. I realise the CWDP will *not* be valid until I have redone the CWNA but I want to clarify whether I can do it in this order.

The reason for this is that I am in the middle of the R&S lab study but a read of the CWDP book would be useful for an upcoming project. If I am going to read the book, I might as well put the extra effort in to do the exam. Interupting the R&S study for one exam is one thing, but I don't really have the time to spare for two, at the moment.

So, can I do it in this reverse order, with the knowledge that the CWDP won't be valid until I redo the CWNA?

Yes, you can take the exams in any order. Good luck on CWDP and R&S!

Fantastic, cheers Kevin.

Any idea when this will be available from Amazon US / UK?

I would like to buy the bundle but $80 shipping for a $40 book is crazy (to Australia).. but then it is ~$34 to the west coast of the US which is equally crazy.

Amazon has their own timelines, and apparently their own Kindle pricing strategy. Though, as one of our Twitter followers pointed out, perhaps Amazon is charging a Kindle premium for NOT having to carry the 900-page CWDP book around, and also not to have to pay to ship this 5 pound beast.

The CWAP study guide is due out in a few weeks, and should also be available on the Kindle, though the Kindle price is, as we've seen, something of a mystery.

OK, so I dumped on Amazon too early. Turns out B&N has a similar pricing strategy: http://goo.gl/Ti64q

I suppose that each is offering the E-reader version at a premium because the printed version is not yet available, so there's literally no choice if you want the book from them today.

Borders isn't offering any E-reader version, and no discount at all on the printed version: http://goo.gl/pYl5I

I would expect they (the book resellers) would purchase the digital version cheaper than print, a la, cheaper digtal downloads vs. a red book CD. If so, a bit of a scam on their part, but I guess they'll do whatever they can get away with.

The paperback is now available from Amazon US.. *taps foot* for Amazon UK.

Just got my copy.

It's awesome.