How Ubiquiti helped me earn my CWNE

Recently I received my CWNE - #308 and, since I certified in a bit of an unorthodox
way, I thought I'd let people know how I did it.  Here's my story.

I started working in Wi-Fi back in 2004. I had started a computer consulting company in Augusta, GA, and a friend of mine asked if I could put wireless in his hotel. I tried and it failed miserably. I used Linksys 802.11b devices and I didn't even know how to crimp cable at the time. But my friend had another friend that owned a hotel and so we tried again, and it got a little better, and eventually I figured it out well enough to get a foothold in the wireless networking business.  At some point I found Ruckus, and things got easier after that.

In 2012 I sold that business and my wife and I moved to Myrtle Beach. We moved into a condo and the homeowners wanted to put wireless in all the buildings. I told them I had some experience in that area and they assigned me the task of finding the best way to do it. I called my old distributor
 and asked for a price on the equipment that it would take to do the job. He told me that there was a new product line that they were introducing called Ubiquiti that he thought might work well and when he told me the price I jumped on it. Ubiquiti was much less expensive than I thought it was going to be, and when I installed it, I found it rather easy to make it work.

Now my curiosity was peeked, and I was on their email list, so when a Ubiquiti class was offered near me I signed up and took the class. Microcom Technologies was hosting the class and they had a great instructor, Kevin Houser, teaching it. He had flown in from San Diego and when I asked him why they hadn't used an East Coast teacher he told me they didn't have one. I told Kevin I thought I'd like to teach and he got me going with Microcom. I took their certification courses and went to work for Microcom teaching classes for Ubiquiti. I then went on and got my CWNA and CWNT and wound up teaching the CWNA quite a bit.

One of the things that helped me understand how Wi-Fi works is the constellation diagrams that Ubiquiti exposes on their AirMax devices.

Ubiquiti shows the constellation diagram for a Point to point connection and from this I learned about the importance of Signal to Noise ratio, the effect of SNR on the MCS rate and the number of bits that are communicated per signal.  Seeing a constellation diagram is a great place to start because you can actually see what's happening on the receiving end.

Another thing you can show with constellation diagrams is the effect of Transmit Power on the data rate. In my class we talk about using the right amount of power to get the desired throughput rate. Usually we can get a 256 QAM at -55.  We then add more power and see that 256 QAM is as fast as we can go. This is usually an "Aha" moment for the students because they can see the number of bits that are represented on the different levels of the MCS. Many Wi-FI concepts come to light with the use of these constellation diagrams and the statistics displayed on the Ubiquiti AirMax devices. 

The funny thing is, Ubiquiti uses TDMA technology in their AirMax line of Access Points. That usually raises the question of; "What's the difference?" And that leads to a discussion of CSMA/CA and the strengths and weaknesses of contention. 

Getting involved in the CWNP got me exposed to the WLAN Pros conferences produced by K Parsons.  There I met several people that helped mentor me on my path to become a CWNE. Devin  Akin and I shared an affinity for Christianity and we became friends. I started following a lot of the Pros on Twitter and got a lot of good insight into the field of Wi-Fi.

Ubiquiti is not considered an Enterprise Wi-Fi solution and I hit a lot of snags trying to apply my primary experience to the Enterprise arena, but getting the basic concept of how Wi-Fi works was a building block that got me started.