Are your wireless engineers certified?

Posted by: Paul DeBeasi

Yesterday Xirrus announced that they have adopted the Certified Wireless Network Administrator (CWNA) training and certification program offered by CWNP. This is a smart move by Xirrus and I wish more enterprises would encourage their network engineers to become certified using CWNP. I am currently working my way through the CWNA study guide. The self study guide is excellent.

Every network engineer would be well advised to get certified. Even experienced network engineers may have "holes" in their knowledge base. In addition, the cost for this vendor-neutral training is very reasonable (only $200 for the study guide, online practice test, and voucher for the on-site certification).

I frequently talk with large enterprises that are willing to invest million of dollars in wireless equipment but never consider an investment in the people that need to maintain that equipment. So, don't forget to invest in your network engineers. As your enterprise becomes more reliant on a wireless infrastructure, it will also become more reliant on your network engineers. An investment in training and certification will payoff the first time you have a WLAN problem.