Forum

What's up fellas, I hope y'all are having a great day, because certainly I'm not (as you can tell from the title of this post)...

I studied HARD, and spent the very last of my savings on preparing for this exam...but apparently I didn't study hard enough. I was hoping CWNA to be my 1st certification ever in the IT industry, so lots of extra effort on my part were poured from almost every angle while going through the official PW0-105 study guide, but it looks like the bombardment of all these acronyms and abbreviations and the different amendments for 802.11 networks beat me to the ground...nevertheless, I scored a 68% and didn't pass just by a mere 2%...not bad for being completely new to this deepness to 802.11 networks.

Now to add to my current extreme frustration, today is June 30th, 2014...so the PW0-105 is no more, starting tomorrow...Now the CWNA-106 is the new bad boy in town, which means I have to cover yet EVEN MORE material to be able to pass....

The question now is: how much more information was added to this new CWNA-106 compared to the previous PW0-105? There's not even a study guide for it yet! I assume it now covers a bunch of stuff related to 802.11ac, but I don't know what else they could've possibly added to this new exam, but from the little I've heard so far, it looks like it's only a 10% difference between both the new (106) and the old exam (105)

Any ideas or suggestions, fellas? Thanks in advance

Sincerely, a frustrated-1st-time-CWNA-exam-taker...

Good news for you Ross. We have a list of resources on the CWNA certification page (http://www.cwnp.com/certifications/cwna) that you can use to brush up on the areas that have changed. First, download this PDF and note the yellow highlighted areas, they are the new topics: http://www.cwnp.com/uploads/cwna_106_exam_objectives_v6-01_2014_what_changed.pdf

Then go through the resources listed on the certification page. All except Matthew Gast's book are free. If you use the free resources in conjunction with the PW0-105 study guide and the 802.11ac webinars archived at the CWNPTV (http://www.youtube.com/user/CWNPTV)channel on YouTube, you should have all the information you need for the new exam. Specifically, watch and take notes during these two videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYQxTnxUGQI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNaiyMmpAc4

I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Tom

Thank for the info Tom! From looking at the CWNA-106 PDF file, it looks like quite a bit was changed (although I'm not certain what the previous percentages were exactly in the PW0-105). In your opinion, do you think these new webinars combined with what's already in the PW0-105 study guide will suffice for the new exam?

The webinars, PW0-105 study guide and BYOD whitepapers linked on the CWNA certification page should suffice until the CWNA-106 study guide is available.

Tom

I would say the amount of information in the "802.11ac A Survival Guide - Matthew S. Gast - O'Reilly" is quite informative, and would recommend reading up on it, so you know the changes between N and AC.  Although I passed the 105 test, I decided to read up on it, so I was aware of the newest standard.

Big one: AC simplifies many of the technologies in N, by giving not as many choices (makes systems more inter-brand compatible). 

Another: AC changes are all in the 5GHz band; the AC AP is basically just an N router in the 2.4 GHz band, just with some efficiency changes that work on G and N devices (that I can confirm, as I picked up a Asus RT-AC68U router so I could play with it at home, and noticed improvements on signal and speed for devices.