Check out the schedule for PMP 450m Technical Certification Training HERE
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Last week I attended the PMP450 training in San Jose hosted by Streakwave Wireless. I am wondering if we will receive any kind of survey or review questionnaire from Cambium about the course. Streakwave was great, the instructor was great, and we appreciate them hosting us for 2 days. However, the course itself needs some improvements. To list a few issues:
- This is the fist training that I have attended in the industry that did not give students training material to take home. We received no course material at all that we were allowed to keep. This isn't a huge deal for myself, but for those I brought with me, and others, being able to refer back to this info after the course is invaluable. We were told that Cambium doesn't allow the instructors to release the slides. For $700 USD each, we should receive something.
- the course and exam are terribly outdated
- the course material sliders were dated 2015. 2 year old material. In this technology, 2 years can be a product lifespan.
- the course and exam both reference BAM and PRIZM, software packages that are no longer available, while not going into cnMaestro at all.
- the course and exam state the widest supported channel bandwidth is 20 MHz (30 MHz was released months ago, not to mention 40 is now available).
- there is a question in the exam that has no correct answer the way it is worded - it has a "not" in the question that negates all answers. The instructors answer key was correct in it's wording. I can't recall the exact question. There needs to be some proof reading and editing of this exam.
- many of the exam questions were worded very poorly, making things confusing, even for me. I'm not saying I'm an expert, but after 21 years in the industry, and working with Canopy radios since day 1 with Motorola, even I was confused by some of the wording.
- there was plenty of information that was not covered at any point in the course material or the exam. A number of troubleshooting tools are available in these radios that were not discussed (all of the Statistics tabs, some of the Tools tabs, logs, etc). For this to be "certification" training, this should have been at least 1 more day in length. 2 days was not enough. Many students felt rushed through a lot of the material.
In the end, I don't really feel this course can be considered a "certification" course. The information seemed more like webinar-level. Cambium needs to do some serious review of this information. If we are expected to pay for stuff like this, it should at least be the most up to date information possible.
Aaron
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Thank you for the feedback. I have forwarded this to our training and product teams and they will contact you shortly.
Ray
Thanks Ray. I sent the same info to Cody Cochrane earlier this week.
Thank you Aaron for your open and valuable feedback. This course was on the radar to be updated by the end of the summer, and when we do the updates we will take your feedback into consideration. You bring up some good points that we need to add into the course.
As for the exam questions, I will work with the team to look into the bad test questions right away.
The slide date needs to be removed as new slide content has been updated a few times each year (we try Quarterly). As well we try to have the test questions reviewed when we update the slides.
Typically, it is up to the instructor if they want to give away printed slides. Can you please email me your shipping address so we can send printed slides out to anyone that was interested in receiving them from the course? amanda.kowalik@cambiumnetworks.com
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Thanks acherman. You just saved me some $. I've been looking to send a couple of guys for training - with travel.
I'm looking to get training from install through monitoring to troubleshooting.
Sounds like what I'm looking for is exactly what isn't being addressed, at least with this "certification" class.
I will wait for the rewrite and a class close - 2hr - from St. Louis, MO.
Thanks again for the heads up.
Amanda, is there a synopsis of the covered topics?
Hi here is the PMP 450 Certification Training Agenda currently:
PMP 450
Course Outline
- Solution Overview
- System Architecture & Components
- Product Specs
- RF Technology Principles
- Understanding RF Fundamentals
- Understanding RF Scheduler & Synchronization
- Hardware Installation
- Installation Best Practices
- AP and STA Unboxing & Pole Mounting (Class Lab)
- Basic Configuration for Quick Initial Deployment
- Individual Lab 1 Exercise – PMP 450 Test Station Setup
- In-Depth Feature & Configuration Topics
- NAT
- Protocol & Port Filtering
- PPPoE
- VLAN & Q-in-Q
- QoS & SLA
- Security
- Network Build out
- Planning
- Link Budget & Network Capacity Planning (Lab)
- Management & Upgrade Using WM & CNUT
- New Features
- Wrap-Up
- Product Roadmap Presentation
- Test
While I acknowledge the products move fast, and it's always difficult to ensure content is up to date, no training is ever perfect.
If you don't see the topics that you're interested or need to have covered, it would be great feedback to get this from you.
We are working on updates to class material (in fact, we do this all the time), and work to correct any confusing or misleading questions in the certification exams. I would hesitate to avoid training, as there is time during the course for you to ask your own questions of the instructor, who usually has the answers. If not, they have access to the right resources within Cambium to get the answers. In fact, we had a Certified Instructor summit about 2 months ago, when all of the instructors attended their own training at our HQ, and we addressed several similar concerns that they heard from their students over the past year. This is an ongoing evolution and (at risk of sounding cliche) an area of continuous improvement.
I want to thank Aaron for his candid feedback, and we will certainly use this to help improve the training product that we put out there.
Matt
Thank you Amanda and Matt for the quick replies.
On another matter...
Is there a video going over the proper installation and algnment of the SM? I haven't been able to find anything. Demos of 500Mb throughput from units 10 feet apart are ok, but show me how to accurately aim the SMs. All I seem to read and come across basically says ignore signal strength and SNR. Other than using a dish, how do you align in the vertical plane? You'd think we'd have this down pat by now, but we seem to "waste" a lot of time at install.
Thanks again to Ray, Amanda, Matt and acherman.
Hi Luis,
Have you checked out the video on Antenna Downtilt at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GebV9SKCbbk ? I understand that aiming is more than just downtilt, but this is what I could find.
If you can post the main points you would like covered in a video, I will work with the team to develop the video.
Thanks
Ray
I also agree that this is probably the most difficult part of installation and deployment of this type of equipment.
We are currently working on cnArcher, which is an Android app that will help with alignment. We will do some videos and webinars around the use of this new tool to help with this exact stuff. There is a thread here asking folks to be beta testers for this app. We should be ready soon to start these trials.
What Ray links to above is a good lesson for the AP side of things, but I suspect you're looking more for aligning the SMs. The reflector dish narrows the beam to about 6 degrees in both azimuth and elevation, which inherently makes alignment more difficult. It is counterintuitive, and almost appears you're aligning the dish into the ground, because everyone is used to seeing the satellites that point to the sky.
Most installers, though not all, prefer using the alignment tone the radio puts out to find the best signal strength. However, there are instances where signal strength is not the only parameter that matters (i.e. multipath scenarios).
There are plenty of other users willing to share their experiences and tips and tricks for installation and alignment with the community.
If you'd like to continue this discussion, I am happy to, and I will move these last few to a new thread...
I would, I would!
Absolutely SM alignment. I find dish alignment "easier" as I have control over all three planes, H, V and tilt. I would almost swear that the H and V displays on the AP side are swapped, but short of climbing the tower to disconnect one side, I can't tell for sure. When there is a signal strength ratio disparity, do I detune to make them even? Split the difference? Do I peak SNR, be it one side or the other? What to do? What to do?
One video showing proper alignmet of the SM with the current tools and displays, would go a long way.
Thanks
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I am having troubles writing my Cambium PMP 450m exam, I wrote it once and the failed, I then returned and it did not allow me back to the questions, now my pc says I had 8 attempts and I can't write any more, please can someone assist me??
Hi can you send me your first and last name and I can check? Or email training@cambiumnetworks.com
Thanks,
Amanda
Hello - I was able to locate your enrollment and have reset it. Please try again and let me know if you still having issues.
Thank you,
training@cambiumnetworks.com