Top 5 Wireless Certifications for IT Pros

If there’s one technical and topical area in networking that bubbles to the top of this active and interesting subject matter, it has to be wireless.

Though networking of all kinds remains a white-hot IT concern and technology area, nothing could be hotter than wireless or mobile technologies for everything from local area networking with 802.11ac on the way in, to the widespread proliferation and adoption of fourth generation (4G) wireless wide area networking technologies like WiMAX and LTE.

This makes it hard to pick only five wireless networking certifications at the top of the heap, so we had to cheat a little bit in this story. Thus, for example we use the cornerstone Certified Wireless Network Administrator as a placeholder for the entire Certified Wireless Networking Professional (CWNP) program on the one hand, and lump together all three of the primary Cisco wireless certifications at the Associate (CCNA Wireless), Professional (CCNP Wireless) and Expert (CCIE Wireless)levels on the other.

And the five that we cite in this story represent just a small sample of the large number of wireless IT certifications available in today’s marketplace, so be prepared to venture beyond our suggestions as your inclinations and proclivities may dictate!

Ed Tittel is a 30-year-plus veteran of the computing industry, who’s worked as a programmer, a technical manager, a classroom instructor, a network consultant and a technical evangelist for companies that include Burroughs, Schlumberger, Novell, IBM/Tivoli and NetQoS. He has written and blogged for numerous publications, including Tom's Hardware, and is the author of over 140 computing books with a special emphasis on informationsecurity, Web markup languages and development tools, and Windows operating systems.

Check out Ed's Tom's IT Pro  Making It in IT - Certification & Training blog here.

See here for all of Ed's Tom's IT Pro articles.

Mary Kyle is a full-time freelance writer, editor, and project manager based in Austin, TX. A former IBMer, Mary has over 10 years of project management experience in IT, software development and IT-related legal issues.

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(Shutterstock cover image credit: Wireless Sign)