How to Setup Wireless Labs for Home Study: CWNA, CWNE

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Continuous improvement and lifelong learning are the cornerstones of a successful career. Embracing new technologies while applying your current skills on the job can accelerate your career progression and open doors to new opportunities. However, many professionals struggle to grasp new technologies without hands-on experience fully. Practical exposure to unfamiliar hardware and software solutions is crucial for building confidence and ensuring proficiency in emerging tools and systems.

Creating a home lab, working through defined lab scenarios, and consistently experimenting with new technologies will help you grow using these technologies and increase the value you can offer to your company and those you serve. Here are a few ways to get started with your home lab and grow your skills as a wireless engineer.

 Home Lab Basics for the CWNA & CWNE

The key to starting a home lab for the CWNA or CWNE (or just experimentation) is to reproduce the same technical contexts you will find in the real world. This means two things:

1. Creating a real “corporate” network in your home, complete with the typical network services you would be interoperating with as a wireless engineer.

2. Find and follow specific wireless lab scenarios in which you can try to gain skills and experience.

Creating Basic Wireless Home Lab Infrastructure

Building a CWNA or CWNE wireless home lab starts with emulating a production environment to practice with realistic scenarios you will encounter in the field. Examples of services in typical business networks include multiple VLANs and subnets, Routing protocols, layer 2-3 port channeling, RADIUS, DHCP, and DNS.

Creating this foundation of common network services will allow you to apply wireless protocols and services in the right context. It is not enough to understand wireless technology or protocol only. You must also integrate it with other key network services or at least work with the responsible engineer. Both scenarios are more easily navigated if you have experimented with the technology before.

Here are some examples of semi-affordable methods for implementing these technologies at home to extend your lab:

• Implement an enterprise network with Cisco, Ubiquiti Unifi, Cisco Meraki GO, or

• Other refurbished or second-hand networking equipment. Make sure whatever you purchase supports VLANs and multiple subnets, and assign VLANs and trunks to ports.

A refurbished microserver or Intel NUC computer can be used as a server. To create enterprise services infrastructure on a cheap, small, and power-efficient machine, you can install the evaluation edition of Windows Server or Hyper-V server running VMs.

Use wireless access points that can work with your networking equipment and support technologies such as 802.1q, RADIUS, WP2 Enterprise Authentication, and multiple SSIDs.

Where to Find Wireless Lab Scenarios

The best way to use the home lab equipment you have put together is to find defined lab scenarios that you can follow to learn new technologies. Some great sources for these are:

• Reddit

• Online communities for certification study and professional networking (Slack, Discord, and other channels).

• CWNA and CWNP Study materials and guides.

Many of these sources are free and will give you a full list of technologies and steps to complete a specific end state of technology. You can then check your work against checklist items to make sure you have configured everything correctly. These are great sources for learning because they often match scenarios you will find working in the real world as a wireless engineer.

How to Build an Advanced Wireless Labs

The next step in experimenting with more advanced wireless technologies is to use equipment that can support more advanced protocols, such as Quality of Service (QoS), Wireless security services (WIDS and WIPS), and mesh networking. These are just a few examples of protocols you should look for. The Cisco AIR—CAP3502i with a 5508 wireless controller is a great budget-friendly option for wireless lab experimentation.

These two items can be purchased for $195.00 and integrated with your basic home lab setup, enabling you to simulate nearly any enterprise wireless lab scenario. With some savvy shopping, the total cost can be around $400.00 or less. You might even score these items at a lower cost—or for free—by checking with local technology shops or businesses looking to offload old equipment they no longer need.

How to Build Point-to-Point and Mesh Wireless Labs

Point-to-point and mesh wireless networking are other common needs in wireless engineering that have become more popular in recent years. These deployment models connect buildings, achieve internet connectivity in remote areas, and extend network connectivity across difficult terrain and urban areas.

Point-to-point and mesh networks do not work well for everyday office connectivity within buildings, but they can be used to connect outbuildings on corporate property or provide guest or vendor wireless access on an outdoor patio. The skills needed to plan, deploy, and maintain these networks differ slightly from those needed for normal WLAN deployment models, so you should study their specifics. Here are some ways to get started with each.

How to Build Point-to-Point and Backhaul Wireless Networks

Point-to-point wireless networks, often called "Backhaul," are designed to transmit traffic from multiple clients over long distances using radio signals from wired or wireless networks. These networks are commonly used to connect two or more network segments across large physical areas where fiber or copper cabling is unavailable or impractical.

For instance, consider two office buildings on the same property—one near the road with existing internet access and another farther away. A Point-to-Point wireless connection can efficiently bridge the gap, providing reliable connectivity without extensive cabling.

The second building, farther from the road, lacks internet or physical cabling but requires a data connection. To address this, you could install a Point-to-Point radio on each rooftop, align them, and configure a network to transmit data between the two. However, this type of link requires careful planning, as it can be affected by weather conditions, obstructions like trees, the curvature of the earth, and other environmental factors. The simplest way to get started with this type of network is through hands-on experimentation, testing the setup to understand its capabilities and limitations.

I highly recommend purchasing used or refurbished Point-to-Point radios from a company like Ubiquiti. Their NanoStation is affordable and capable of creating links over long distances. All you need are two devices to get started. For practice, you could set up a link between your home network and a nearby shed, gaining hands-on experience with installation and configuration. Ubiquiti's NanoStations are a practical, budget-friendly option for experimenting with Point-to-Point wireless networks.

Mesh Networks

Mesh networking is gaining popularity in both consumer and business settings. It blends the best of Point-to-Point and WLAN network architectures, offering wireless engineers highly flexible deployment options. A common use case for mesh wireless networks is in business offices or retail environments that require seamless indoor and outdoor wireless coverage but face challenges in routing cabling to all desired locations. Mesh networks allow wireless radios to be installed in hard-to-reach areas without the need for extensive cabling, making them an ideal solution for such scenarios.

For example, you might already have a cable routed to the ceiling inside, where you can mount a primary access point. If you have an outdoor space to cover without cabling, you could install an outdoor wireless AP with mesh networking capabilities. Then, the outdoor device creates a mesh network with the hard-wired indoor AP, and clients can connect to the access networks of each radio with full roaming and networking support. These are great radios to work with and worth trying for yourself.

Because mesh networking can be more susceptible to latency and interference issues, it’s important to plan your channel and power usage and the number of radios in a given space.

Again, Ubiquiti makes a great product for learning about mesh networking. You can experiment with two Unifi AP AC Mesh radios for about $200 new, less for refurbished or used models. Use these to try connecting the outdoor spaces of your home to the indoor network with wireless meshing and focus on tuning power levels and channel numbers for better performance.

Final Thoughts

Creating a home lab for continued learning and wireless experimentation is a great way to boost your skill level and marketability as a wireless networking engineer. You can often build an inexpensive home lab for study and experimentation by finding equipment second-hand from local companies or by purchasing from resellers or refurbishing companies online.

These are great points of entry for experimentation and learning, and you will quickly find that you can learn a lot with a minimal amount of equipment. The only limit to what you can learn and gain experience with is how much time you put in! Find well-defined lab scenarios online and work through them in your technology lab. You will find these skills invaluable during your work in the field.