ECSE Course Experience #Ekahau #WIFI #Design
I’ve been doing WIFI for over 3 years now and used few design and survey tools like Ekahau and Tamograph Site Survey. Always had a notion in mind if I am doing things correctly or missing something important while completing a site predictive design or validation survey. I’ve always wanted to make sure I follow the best practices and the correct procedure so happen to stumble across this course on the Ekahau website for Ekahau Certified Survey Engineer. I have been fortunate enough for the course being able to be sponsored by my employer.
As per the new normal, my course was online led by Eddie Forero – CWNE#160. I’ve always known him by his blog at Bad-fi, the classic for how not to do WIFI. The course runs for 4 days with 3.5 days of actual knowledge sharing and then the last .5 days dedicated to completing the exam. The course will work out great if you have already been in the WIFI space for a while and know how the basics work. CWNA is highly recommended but not essential. The first day of the course is spent in knowing what WIFI is and how it works, 802.11 fundamentals. You don’t work with Ekahau software for the first day of the course but a good day to brush up on your skills or learn something new about WIFI technology for which everyone takes granted 🙂 I was amazed to know that WIFI encompasses around 42-43 frame types whereas Ethernet only has 1 frame type.
There were several tricks and shortcuts which I learned during the course for e.g. I never knew that there is a cable run icon available that can help determine the closest cabling outlet and especially very useful in large warehouse-type environments. Also helps to avoid POE-type issues due to cable lengths going above 100-110Mts. I came to know about the terms like “Green Diamond”, “Contention Game” etc… A day was spent in doing predictive designs and some things like how to figure out the scale of the map, predict the wall type, etc. by the customer/client if it is not provided. The course certainly complements if you are on your way to complete the CWNP and then CWNE ultimately.
Another day is dedicated to knowing the best practices in doing the site-surveys. What is involved in the AP on a stick survey? How stop-and-go survey is not as good as the continuous survey. I came to know the correct way to measure the wall attenuation and the distance from which it should be measured.
It was a pleasure to have Eddie as the course trainer. He definitely made things look simple and never a moment when we lost track or felt sleepy and bored at any stage :).I came across a lot of useful, free resources which are available on his blog post (♒︎ BadFi.com ♒︎) Lastly, special thanks to Keith Parsons for starting this course.
[…] was grateful to my work for sponsoring me to complete the ECSE Design course. Though I had used Ekahau for around 4 years, It was a great learning outcome for me to learn some […]