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  • I am preparing for this exam and would like to know your experience (of course, without violating Exam Agreement).
    Are the exam questions differ from bonus exams supplied with official study book? As I experienced with my CWDP, they could be very different...

  • By (Deleted User)

    Keep in mind that the book was written according to the exam objectives. The chapter questions in any study guide are more for the exercise of testing your knowledge of what was presented in that chapter, rather than what an actual exam question might look like. Focus on the knowledge, not the questions. I can assure you that the bonus questions provided on the CD (or [url=http://www.cwnp.com/sybex]download[/url]) are very different from the questions you will see on the exam.

    Good luck!

  • No doubts, they are different. But I would like to grasp the "feeling" of exam in order not to be stressed as during CWDP pass. Can practice tests from CWNP give me that feeling?

  • By (Deleted User)

    HA! Not sure what kind of 'feeling' you'll get from CWAP practice test items, but since they are written by the same crew that wrote the exam, the 'feeling' should be similar. :-)

  • Kevin and Simplewireless,

    Yes, you really can learn the mindset, the tenor,..., the [i]feeling[/i] so to speak of the CWNP tests. IMHO it's very important. But you need many many practice questions to do that. One batch of 60 is not going to be enough - I start feeling good after about 180 questions and the third or fourth time through them.

    The trouble is, if your not careful, you'll start remembering the questions and their answers, and at that point you stop learning, you're only memorizing. Memorizing the practice test that is, NOT even the material.

    CWNP questions are usually written VERY carefully, and you need to learn how to figure out what they are really asking. Not always the easiest thing to do.

    I think that is why some people feel the questions are sneaky. They are not really, but their choice of wording is VERY carefully planned and deliberate. If you don't figure out how to understand their mindset, you'll likely think they are being sneaky.

    Good luck. Read from many sources and, as always "Study to the Objectives"

  • Do not get me wrong! I do not want to memorize answers, I want to be familiar with exam format.
    As far as I understand, that is what "practice exams" are made for. But in fact "the bonus questions provided on the CD (or download) are very different ". So, 2 full-length practice exams boasted on official study book cover are just marketing terms.

  • I'm just fail this exam today by 48%
    it's very difficult.

  • I have just passed this exam. Really difficult but doable!

  • By (Deleted User)

    Very well done, simplewireless.ru! Can you please share your exam prep and experience?

  • 1) [b]CWAP official study guide[/b]. Though it is not perfect yet, there is no other guide better for basic preparation. There are errors both in text, exercises and sometimes vague explanations. Read it carefully, try to remember everything, re-read chapters that you find difficult to grasp from first time.
    Of course, only official study is not enough. Try to complement it with other activities as well.
    2) Install Wi-Fi protocol analyzer and [b]try to simulate every aspect of Wi-Fi operation[/b] mentioned in the book. Historically I used Airmagnet Laptop Analyzer. In the course of my studies I tried also Wireshark and CommView for Wi-Fi. Worth trying because I needed 802.11n analyzer and my version of Airmagnet was not supporting my 802.11n card.
    3) Use access points and Wi-Fi clients that you can control and try to configure any options it has and analyze its behaviour in the air with help of protocol analyzer. I used Cisco AP at work and TP-Link at home. It was really interesting hand-on experience to compare these two vendors. First works as expected but I had a lot of ?surprises? with TP-Link. Really useful to [b]see with your eyes different implementations of one standard[/b]! Know PHY and MAC as stated in standard and compare its behaviour as implemented by vendor.
    4) Use protocol analyzer for [b]analysis of real-world implementations[/b]. My office building has many corporate inhabitants. It has more than 20 Wi-Fi networks in one place! It was nice experience to apply capture and display filters and sort out the captures that were of interest to me as ?Wi-Fi analyst and troubleshooter?. Some recommendations produced by me were useful to optimize Wi-Fi operations in our office.
    5) Get hands-on experience with spectrum analyzer. It is expensive part of your studies. But I was lucky to have access to both Cisco Spectrum Expert and Cisco CleanAir access points. Really useful to [b]see the unique characteristics of different interferers at spectrum analyzer[/b]. See Microwave oven, Bluetooth devices, analog videocameras etc. And analyze its impact on Wi-Fi operation.
    6) Also I can highly recommend this document as additional CWAP preparation material. It is chapter named "Wireless sniffing with wireshark" from book named "Wireshark and Ethereal network protocol analyzer toolkit". You can read it free at author's site: http://www.willhackforsushi.com/books/377_eth_2e_06.pdf
    It has a lot of examples of practical situations and many useful tips for wireless analysis techniques with Wireshark.

    Hope that other candidates will find my advice useful in their preparations!

    Kevin, could you please answer my question regarding procedure to become CWNP learning partner? It is placed here: http://www.cwnp.com/bbpress/topic.php?id=6677

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