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  • Hello everyone,

    Another one of those post about a CWNA candidate preparation for the exam.

    First of all, my brain is at the total opposite of the elephant once it comes to memory not to mention my sleeping apneas which makes my life terrible whenever I want to read something I am falling asleep constantly.

    So, for those who are like me and needs to read 5 + time the same page and still forget half of it 50 pages later. Keep it up and take lots of notes. I am not new to the networking environment and had interest into wireless for few years. I am the type of guy who constantly need to practice and keep myself into something if I want to keep rolling without too much memory failure.

    I passed Cisco certifications and Linux certs as well.
    I am at the chapter 20th of the CWNA studty guide and what I found out is whenever it comes to standards, numbers, and so on (I am lost !) I just have such a hard time to remember things if I don't take good notes. I know how to deal with it but this makes the CWNA way harder than a CCNA Wireless to me, simply because it is really all about basics knowledge of the standards and it is non vendors specific way.

    I don't know if the exam questions are a lot similar to the book questions ?  (sometime I just feel like flipping my desk when reading some questions like, what clause of the IEEE 802.3 standard define POE ?
    If the questions of the study guide are similar on the exam then I am better to get a couple of notepad and extra pens.

    Don't get me wrong I feel quite confident about passing the exam and going further but I must say that CWNP certs is highly rewarding to read and I learned a lot more than while studying for my CCNA Wireless or reading Cisco documentation on the other hand I feel like I am spending a lot of time trying to memorize standards even if I understand the concepts and theory.

    I will be listing all the study materials I've used and how I worked my way through the exam.
    All it takes is to know the right methodology to get yourself on the right path when learning something.

    (Fun fact, I already bought the CWAP book back in Feb 2016 and I WILL pass that exam no matter how many liters of ink will I have to scratch on a note book)

    I am expecting to be taking the exam by the end of this month.

    Thanks,
    Ben

  • I know what you mean !

    It has been a while since I have taken an exam, but you should be able to get HIGH 90's on all the practice tests, before you take the exam.

    And always remember:  Study to the Official Exam Objectives, Not the book.

    As for the sleep Apnea, I recommend a CPAP machine.   Everyone I know who has one, loves it - even their spouses like it!

  • Boom !

    Done I passed it this morning, I was a little scared during the first 25 questions of the exam I lost a bit of confidence and even by the end of the exam I thought I would be somewhere in the range of 65-75% because I felt like I totally missed the beginning of the exam, (not my first IT exam, passed a couple Cisco and Linux exam before)

    I was marked 92% at the end and I can tell that I was super confident on most of my answers but I still feel like some of my answers where done by "elimination process" I could somehow justify why I eliminated some propositions but what was left was hard to figure it out if it would be the most appropriate answer. This was the case for about ~10 questions
    They like to twist wording around trying to confuse people !
    I must recommend people to keep in mind that IEEE and WMM requirements are two very distinct thing and I am glad I spent the extra hours demystifying it ! READ THE QUESTIONS and pay attention to the wording.

    Other than that I would like to thanks Howard, seriously you're a good contributor when it comes to the CWNP forum.
    I can thanks other people that are not here but on twitter.

    I am not that excited about the fact that I passed the exam, I went there quite confident. I enjoyed my journey towards the CWAP way more than when I did my CCNA Wireless. I will be moving towards CWAP or CWSP next.
    I don't care much about being CWNA certified, but I truly am thanks-full of the CWNP for their materials. 

    I certainly didn't picked Wireless for the money, I am excited to make "ok" money doing WiFi all day, even if I don't earn as much as I used to working for Google (Hardware Data Center ops) Wireless is what I always wanted to do so I'll keep learning and try to get better at it :)

    Cheers,
    Ben

  • Great job on the exam!

    And, you're right, Howard is great too!

  • By Howard - edited: May 31, 2016

    Thanks Ben and Tom.  I appreciate it.

    I often get into the more esoteric details of the standard in my job.   Writing about them helps keep me on my toes and I hope my explanations can help others understand it all just a little better.

    Glad to be of help when I can

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