When I got cisco 881w first time it was interesting experience. This device presented new concept which was different to model I knew so far, which is 871w. In 881w router module and wireless module are separated. With that being said, router configuration and access point configuration is separated as well. Also, each module (router and access point) has own IOS:

• c880data-universalk9-mz.152-1.T1 – router IOS
• ap801-k9w7-mx.124-21a.JA1 – access point IOS

As usual, first I connected device to console cable and attempted to configure it. Not being familiar with new concept it was a bit of a failure 🙂 So, eventually had to refer to documentation to find out what’s going on. Problem which came up was, how to access wireless module to configure it or even check if it’s there 🙂

So, finally after I did apply reading ability and spent few minutes with Cisco documentation I was able to access wireless module and configure it to provide wireless services in the air. Here is how that happend:

First on router console I checked if wireless module is there and what is status of that part of new device:

R1#service-module wlan-ap 0 status
Service Module is Cisco wlan-ap0
Service Module supports session via TTY line 2
Service Module is in Steady state
Service Module reset on error is disabled
Service Module heartbeat-reset is enabled
Getting status from the Service Module, please wait..

Image path       = flash:/ap801-k9w7-mx.124-21a.JA1/ap801-k9w7-mx.124-21a.JA1
System uptime    = 100 days, 6 hours, 44 minutes, 21 seconds

R1#

Once I could see that there is wireless module and even has it’s own IOS I could move on and jump to console of the access point:

R1#service-module wlan-ap 0 session
Trying 192.168.2.1, 2002 ... Open
User Access Verification

Username: cisco
Password:
AP#

Now wireless configuration could be added to device and router could become also access point for users.