Changing a WAP from Lightweight mode to Autonymous mode

So you're sick of cheap ass wireless access points and you've bought yourself a Cisco Air-LAP1142-X-XX off eBay. To your dismay, it's in Lightweight mode and needs a Cisco wireless controller. Fear not, as you can convert it to autonomous mode pretty easily, as long as you have a Cisco support account that will allow you to download the latest firmware. If you do, download it. You will need a TFTP server of some sort (there are plenty of them for you to find on the internet).

Assuming you know the enable password on the LAP device, do the following:

1. Get into enable mode:

en

2. Go into the debug mode to get the full range of commands:

debug capwap console cli

3. Set a static IP and default gateway for the Gigabit Ethernet interace

 conf t
 ip default-gateway 192.168.x.x
 int GigabitEthernet0
 ip address 192.168.x.x 255.255.255.0
 end

NOTE: If you don't set a default gateway, it will force itself to use DHCP again and delete your static IP, causing the next step to fail.

3. Download the the latest firmware from your TFTP server

archive download-sw /overwrite /force-reload tftp://X.X.X.X/XXXX-k9w7-XXXXXXX.tar

It will reboot itself when it's done and it will now be in Autonomous mode.