Are your wireless engineers certified?

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, and it is excellent.  The vendor-neutral certification levels get progressively more complex, and culminate in the CWNE (Certified Wireless Network Expert) certification.

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 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 your engineers have to solve a tough wireless interference problem.