Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Cisco Aironet 1242AG lightweight to autonomous

There are two different models of this access point available, a full version and a lightweight version. The lightweight version is much cheaper than the full or autonomous version. But it is fairly easy to convert the light version to an autonomous version; this is exactly what I did.

To convert it you are going to need to download the image for the autonomous version, this is available for free from Cisco although not the newest version. You go to https://software.cisco.com/download select wireless and then access points. From here you will get a list of all of the different access points. Down load the newest version you can, at this point if you do not have an account you will be prompted to create one or sign in.

You are also going to need TFTP server software so you can transfer the image. There is a built in one for Windows, I do not recommend using it though, and I recommend Tftpd32 available here: http://download.cnet.com/Tftpd32/3000-2085_4-10114225.html . It is a very straight forward installation, after installation make sure to select the directory that you downloaded the image to.

Next we need to log in through the console, you can use your favorite software I like Tera Term http://en.osdn.jp/projects/ttssh2/releases/ the default username and password is Cisco, type enable and you will be prompted for a password here we type Cisco. Once this is done we need to load the new image from the TFTP server. Here is the command: 
archive download-sw /force-reload /overwrite tftp:// <ip address of TFTP server>/<name of                 the file>   then press enter.

The system will restart and obtain an IP address from the DHCP server. With this address you can now log in through the web interface and configure your access point. Here is a link to a video that gives step by step how to change from Autonomous to lightweight and back. It is a very good and thorough video https://supportforums.cisco.com/video/11928901/lwapp-lightweight-mode-autonomous-conversion-and-vice-versa




Scott Gamet
A+, NET+
CCENT
MCST Windows 7

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