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CWNA CWNA-109 lessons
Study CWNA for free
A week-by-week plan with every lesson, quizzes, checkpoint tests, a practice exam and hands-on labs.
Open the CWNA study planA week-by-week plan with every lesson, quizzes, checkpoint tests, a practice exam and hands-on labs.
Domain 1: Radio frequency (RF) technologies
- RF wave characteristics: wavelength, frequency, amplitude and phase, and how wavelength shrinks as frequency rises
- RF behaviors: reflection, refraction, diffraction, scattering, absorption, free space path loss and multipath
- RF math: mW and dBm conversion, the rule of 10s and 3s, dB gain and loss, dBi vs dBd
- Signal metrics: RSSI, noise floor, SNR, receive sensitivity and fade margin
- Link budgets and EIRP: transmitter power, cable and connector loss, antenna gain
- Antenna types: omnidirectional, semi-directional (patch, panel, Yagi, sector) and highly directional (parabolic dish)
- Antenna characteristics: gain, beamwidth, polarization, azimuth and elevation charts
- Point-to-point links: visual vs RF line of sight, the Fresnel zone and earth bulge
- MIMO radios: radio chains, spatial streams, transmit beamforming, MU-MIMO
- Modulation and coding basics: DSSS, OFDM, OFDMA, BPSK through QAM, and MCS indexes
Domain 2: WLAN regulations and standards
- Roles of the IEEE, Wi-Fi Alliance, IETF and national regulators such as the FCC
- Wi-Fi Alliance certifications and generation names: Wi-Fi 4, 5, 6, 6E and 7
- 802.11 PHYs: DSSS/HR-DSSS (b), OFDM (a), ERP (g), HT (n), VHT (ac), HE (ax)
- 2.4 GHz channels, channel overlap and the 1/6/11 plan
- 5 GHz U-NII bands, 20/40/80/160 MHz channel bonding and channel numbering
- 6 GHz operation: WPA3 or Enhanced Open requirement and preferred scanning channels
- DFS and TPC requirements in 5 GHz radar bands
- 802.11ax features: OFDMA resource units, 1024-QAM, BSS coloring, Target Wake Time, uplink MU-MIMO
- Roaming and management amendments: 802.11k, 802.11r, 802.11v and 802.11w
- Regulatory power limits, EIRP rules and why they vary by country
Domain 3: WLAN protocols and devices
- 802.11 frame types: management, control and data, and common subtypes (beacon, probe, auth, assoc, ACK, RTS/CTS, null data)
- Frame addressing: BSSID, SSID/ESSID, source, destination, transmitter and receiver addresses
- Joining a BSS: passive and active scanning, open system authentication, association and the 4-way handshake
- Medium access: CSMA/CA, DCF, physical carrier sense (CCA) and virtual carrier sense (NAV)
- Interframe spaces (SIFS, DIFS, AIFS), random backoff and contention windows
- QoS with WMM/EDCA access categories: voice, video, best effort and background
- Protection mechanisms: RTS/CTS and CTS-to-self
- Power management: power save bit, TIM, DTIM, U-APSD and Target Wake Time
- Aggregation and Block Ack; frame control flags such as Retry
- Client-driven roaming, reassociation and 802.11k/v assistance
- AP types and devices: autonomous, controller-managed, cloud-managed, mesh and bridges; PoE standards
Domain 4: WLAN network architecture and design concepts
- Management, control and data planes and where each lives in autonomous, controller-based, cloud-managed and distributed designs
- Centralized (tunneled) vs local (distributed) data forwarding
- Gathering requirements: client types and capabilities, applications, density, coverage areas and constraints
- Coverage vs capacity design, cell sizing and airtime
- Channel reuse plans, co-channel contention and channel width choices
- Design targets for voice and real-time apps: signal, SNR, secondary coverage
- High-density design: more APs at lower power, directional antennas, 5 and 6 GHz
- SSID and VLAN design, 802.1Q trunks to APs, SSID overhead
- Data rate settings, band steering and load balancing
- PoE planning: 802.3af, 802.3at and 802.3bt power budgets
Domain 5: WLAN network security
- Legacy weaknesses: WEP, TKIP, shared key authentication, SSID hiding and MAC filtering
- WPA2 and WPA3 Personal and Enterprise; CCMP/AES and GCMP
- SAE and its resistance to offline dictionary attacks; transition mode
- Enhanced Open (OWE) for open networks
- 802.1X roles: supplicant, authenticator and authentication server (RADIUS)
- EAP methods: EAP-TLS, PEAP, EAP-TTLS and their certificate needs
- The 4-way handshake: PMK, PTK and GTK
- Protected Management Frames (802.11w)
- Rogue APs, evil twins and WIPS; guest access, captive portals and client isolation
Domain 6: RF validation and remediation
- Site survey types: predictive, passive, active and AP-on-a-stick
- Pre-survey preparation: floor plans, scale, requirements, access and safety
- Post-installation validation surveys against design requirements
- Spectrum analysis: FFT, waterfall and duty cycle views; identifying non-Wi-Fi interferers
- Protocol analysis: monitor mode, channel selection, capture location, filters
- Key metrics: RSSI, SNR, retry rate, channel utilization, data rates
- Common RF problems: co-channel contention, adjacent channel interference, hidden nodes, low SNR
- Client problems: sticky clients, power mismatch between AP and client, driver issues
- Connection problems: wrong passphrase, expired RADIUS certificates, DHCP and VLAN errors
- Structured troubleshooting and documenting findings