Kirkian Computing

Tag: CWNP

  • My first 50 certifications

    I did my first (vocational) IT exam in 1999. This was after an annual appraisal from my (then) manager, who said “I’ve spoken to lots of people, and they’re all very impressed with your work. However, there’s no way for me to quantify your performance, so you don’t get a pay rise.” Based on that, I decided that it would be useful to have some objective evidence of my abilities from a neutral 3rd party, so I took the Visual Basic 5.0 exam and became a Microsoft Certified Professional.

    Fast forward to 2023: I’ve now passed 41 exams and earned 50 certifications. In all honesty, this process has been a bit haphazard; I’ve picked certifications based on what looked interesting at the time, or what related to a skill I’d been using at work, rather than having a clear roadmap of where I wanted my career to go. I’ve also sometimes leant towards the Pokémon approach of “gotta collect them all!” So, I think it’s time to look back and review which of these were worthwhile, and which I’d recommend to other people.

    NB I’m not including my university degrees in this list, because they’re academic rather than vocational. I’m also not including the European Computer Driving License (ECDL), because that’s aimed at end users rather than IT professionals.

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  • CWTS

    Last month, I took the Certified Wireless Technology Specialist (CWTS) exam. This is issued by CWNP, who are similar to CompTIA, i.e. it’s a vendor-neutral exam rather than being based around specific technology (e.g. Cisco access points).

    The CWNP website says: “The CWTS certification validates the knowledge of enterprise WLAN sales and support professionals who must be familiar and confident with the terminology and basic functionality of enterprise 802.11 wireless networks.” Similarly, when I booked the exam on the Pearson Vue website, they list it as: “PW0-071: Certified Wireless Technology Specialist – Sales (CWTS)”. This exam isn’t a pre-requisite for any of the higher qualifications, so you could start with the CWNA instead (“the foundation level enterprise Wi-Fi certification for the CWNP Program”). As I understand it, the main difference between the CWTS and the CWNA is “what vs. how”, although I don’t really know enough about the CWNA yet to comment in detail.

    Having said that, I learnt a lot by preparing for this exam, and I think there is quite a bit of technical detail in here. For instance, here’s section 3.6 of the exam objectives:

    Understand and apply basic RF antenna concepts

    • Passive Gain
    • Beamwidth
    • Simple diversity
    • Polarization

    I think there are a lot of IT professionals who would struggle to define all of those terms. Similarly, here’s one of the sample questions from the start of the textbook:

    What can contribute to voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) in an IEEE 802.11g wireless LAN circuit?

    1. Output power of the access point
    2. Impedance mismatch
    3. Gain of an antenna
    4. Attenuation value of cable

    So, this is a bit more involved than just saying “Buy a wireless router and plug it in at home”!

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