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Okay, well, I'm a network professional with a specialty in wireless and a keen interest in historical wireless networking, and "non-standard" stuff is also quite interesting. I'm no Richard Easton.
I want to start with a disclaimer, by no means would I, nor should I be interpreted to be saying or implying that any contribution, regardless of source, isn't valuable. Whether it comes from a woman, or man, white, black, or any color in-between, non-binary, gay, bi, trans, whatever. The contributor is valuable and their contribution is always valued.
That being said, FHSS, has its uses, and it's been used in wireless. It's a valid technology that should be recognised as such. As with many things, it wasn't a singular effort, and nobody should imply otherwise.
As others have pointed out, the most commonly known technology which employs FHSS is Bluetooth; and trust me, trying to track down issues caused by BT interference is a nightmare because of it. Generally I avoid the problem by not using the 2.4ghz ISM band as much as possible, but I digress.
For those saying it's not part of 802.11, it actually is. It's an old part of the protocol which has long since been replaced and it is considered obsolete by the IEEE 802.11 group.
However, in the 802.11 protocol, sometimes called 802.11 prime (Wikipedia calls it "legacy"), it states: "[802.11] specified two raw data rates of 1 and 2 megabits per second (Mbit/s) to be transmitted via infrared (IR) signals or by either frequency hopping or direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) in the Industrial Scientific Medical frequency band at 2.4 GHz." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11_(legacy_mode)
All I want to really add, is that networking is a team sport. If companies and people didn't work together to make it function, then it wouldn't work.
Only by collaborating and working together towards improvement and an increase in the ability of the technology to work across all platforms, vendors, manufacturers, and devices, can we get it to function at all. This fact is as true now as it was when FHSS was invented. Everyone needs to work together in order to make any real progress. Otherwise, all of our wifi stuff would "speak" different languages, and nothing outside of a single companies product line, would work with anything else.
Everyone's contributions have helped wifi get to it's current state, and that should never be forgotten.
I also work with Wi-Fi and am a CWNE, this post is spot on, thank you for writing this with such accuracy and clarity.
I've been thinking of going for my cwna/cwne. I just haven't taken the time to figure out how to go about it.
Any pointers? Obviously I have a pretty solid foundation of knowledge, it's just the whole getting it written thing that I'm most unsure of.
Though, having a good resource for studying just to review, would be nice as well.
For CWNA, the study guide and practice tests are all that I would recommend to pass the exam. The guides contain really good information although I'm sure you'll know a lot of it already. For the CWNP, CWSP and CWAP, I'd recommend the study guide and practice tests again, but with some online research for any topics you're struggling with. The CWAP exam is quite tough so you'll need to get hands on with packet captures. But in general I found most exams to be fair and related to the real world, no vendor specific nonsense or horrible trick questions.
Once those are done the CWNE requires three short essays (less than 1000 words). And some other form of input, such as a white paper or blog, the CWNP website has this detailed but don't worry too much about that now.
For the CWNA, I'd start with the study guide and see how you take to it. I found it really useful throughout my career. Feel free to reach out in the future if you have any questions.