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Yes, work and life in general, can make that last recommendation very tough to follow.

Thanks guys.

Advice and comments much appreciated. Will look into it all.

Thank you

Cheers

Rols 

You guys sucked me in! I just ordered the AP, was looking forward to a lot of subjects in it anyway so I may as well get started. Between DP, AP, and CASP I should have enough reading and studying to keep me occupied for a while anyway hehe.

Anybody know when the AP might be updated? I know it was mentioned the SP was going to be updated around early next year.

Cheers!

I took the first (real) class for CWAP, and that was very late in 2011, so I would guess 2015.   I'll ask my instructor if he knows, and post his answer here.

They (CWNP) may see your question here or you can email customercare@cwnp for an answer too.

Hey Neal, I know just how you feel. Having looked at the various certs I think I'll be following Howard's views and going for the CWAP too. I'd buy the book tomo but I want to see when they plan to update it all. I will be keen on seeing that comment. No point buying the book now if it gets updated later in the year. It'll take me that long to study it with the current workload we've got on at work! 2015 though....an update then, that could be a possible :>)

I could do with some better analysis skills. The only thing is, looking at the table of contents...unless it goes into much more detail on each subject, 3/4 of the TOC looks like the CWNA TOC. Might be better buying an airpcap and spending some time with wireshark ;>)

Cheers all

Roland

My CWAP instructors guess is that the soonest it would be available is " later this year at the earliest".   But that was only a guess.

Rol, you really can't go by the TOC.  The CWAP cert is so much more than the CWNA. For one,  you'll be having nightmares/dreams about spectrum analyzer screen shots.  Also, the Wireshark/PCAP tool will be underutilized without the CWAP to go along with it.   

From a Spectrum Analyzer perspective -  if can you get you boss to pay for it, the  WI-Spy DBX along with the Chanelyzer Pro make a great combo.    If nothing else, I'd recommend the free version of Chanalyzer, and the smaller Chanalyzer 2.4x.    I have both of those, my company has both the Pro and Lab versions of the software, and both the DBx and the 900x versions of their Wi-Spy .     Both my company and I have one of the Finder antennas.  All of these are great products, and their customer service is first rate.    The Power company was blown-away by the performance of the 900x, when we showed how much their newly installed Smart metering gear was polluting the our RF environment.

We also have an $80,000 SA, but it probably weighs 40 pounds and takes up most of the desk it's on.   Its definitely not a portable tool.

We have both OmniPeek and Wireshark packet analyzers here at work.   With OmniPeek, I can use up to 4 Cisco AE1000 wireless USB adaptors for scanning multiple channels simultaneously.    I don't use Wireshark much but the guy using it the most also has one of the PCAP adaptors.    He says my OmniPeek is faster, i.e. it misses fewer packets.    

Yet another book is handy, but I don't know if it's still available.   That's the first version of the CWAP book which used to be available for free for download, here on the CWNP site.   Don't try to use it by itself for the cert, but it makes a good adjunct.

Another good book is "802.11 WLAN Hands-On Analysis" by Byron W. Putnam.   But beware, the Link-Ferret software  and sniffer files originally advertized for it are no longer available.

Hey thanks. Great comments and advice. I will def' be going for the CWAP. I'm just addicted to wifi. I was getting a tad bored of IT to be honest but the whole CWNP thing and the knowledge from studying it has given me a renewed interest. Ive had chanalyzer pro and the Dbx at work for over a year now. Love it. Great bit of kit. It was hard going at first as spectrum analysis reminds me of looking through the eyes of 'the predator', if you remember the movie. At first it just looked like a mass of distorted colour. It took a while to get to grips with what I was seeing. Staff have often found me wandering the corridors with a laptop and the kit attached ha ha. I love the directional finder as well and that proved its worth alone one time tracking down an AP that was not part of our network but in our company. Ive also got wireshark at work and a great book on it too. Thanks for the tip on that other book, I'll look it up.

I'm trying to get our company to buy into metageeks protocol analyser too. Its been a while since I looked into it to be honest...eye-spy, I think???

I know wireshark can do it but their kit is purely aimed at wifi and looks to present the data better or rather easier and quicker to interpret.

I totally recognise the nightmares/dreams bit about spectrum analysis. I can remember looking at it and saying out loudly, 'what the hell am i seeing, what the hell is this telling me' ha ha Every time I find a bit of electrical kit that I think could produce rf I have to test it out just to see what it looks like in chanalyzer :>)

I now get the usual 'here we go again' looks from my colleagues.

Thanks again Howard and also the tip about the cwap being a lot heavier than the cwna. I found the cwna quite hard going so lord knows what the cwap will do to me :>)

On an aside note and question, and I apologise for asking this in this particular part of the site (if there is a better place to ask here please tell me) but what are your views on SCA? We have meru at our new build. We had HP kit at the last place - standard MCA. The meru kit does seem to have different advantages and disadvantages to the MCA kit. I've been doing some iperf tests and the figures are a tad weird. 

Cheers again

Rol

Rol,

Well, Wi-Fi is a "healthy addiction"!  Wi-Fi continues to explode in use, so you are at a great place to learn and keep learning!

My suggestion would be to start a new thread on SCA vs. MCA (which is a great discussion topic and lots of opinions in the WLAN field out there), as this one is getting a bit long.

Cheers. I'll do that. many thanks :>)

Rol