When you need to use your computer as wireless hotspot, you can easily enable that functionality with PowerShell:

Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

PS C:\windows\system32> netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Windows-Wireless-Hotspot key=password123
The hosted network mode has been set to allow.
The SSID of the hosted network has been successfully changed.
The user key passphrase of the hosted network has been successfully changed.

PS C:\windows\system32> netsh wlan start hostednetwork
The hosted network started.

PS C:\windows\system32>

Here is how to turn Raspberry PI with Linksys WUSB100 v2.0 adapter and Raspbian into wireless access point. This might be handy for conference rooms where you have wired connection, but wireless signal is too low. Just quick setup on Raspberry, plugin the cable and you have wireless available.

Install required packages

apt-get install firmware-ralink wireless-tools hostapd bridge-utils

Modify /etc/network/interfaces to add bridge interface

auto lo br0

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet manual

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual

iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports eth0 wlan0

Once network configuration is modified reboot Raspberry PI.

Create /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf file to define access point configuration

interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
bridge=br0
country_code=PL
ieee80211d=1
ssid=raspb3rry-wifi
hw_mode=g
channel=6
wme_enabled=0
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=raspberry123
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP

Add configuration information to /etc/default/hostapd

That will make hostapd daemon to start automatically each time Raspberry PI will bootup.

DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"

Default driver for Linksys WUSB100 Ver.2 doesn’t work on Windows 7 64-bit. Instead  of that Ralink USB RT2870 (currently MediaTek) driver can be used.

Properly working driver can be found here.

If you want to use Windows Server 2012 Datacenter on workstation/laptop (sometimes it is handy to have mobile workstation with server operating system) you might experience issues with wireless networking. Even if driver for wireless network adapter is installed you might not be able to connect to any wi-fi network.

In order to use wireless in Windows Server 2012 Datacenter additional feature has to be installed: Wireless LAN Service. This can be installed from PowerShell prompt using add-windowsfeature wireless-networking command, as shown on screenshot below:

Once installed and server rebooted make sure that WLAN AutoConfig service is started, as shown on screenshot below:

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So, finally I got 6 brand new Cisco 1142n wireless access points. They all are lightweight access points, which means that more less Wireless Controller is required to get them to work. Unfortunatelly due to many circumstances I have purchase of Wireless Controller delayed, so for now have to turn all of those into autonomus wireless devices. That means that IOS has to be replaced on those devices to allow 1142n be fully configured.

• Original software which came on devices was: c1140-rcvk9w8-mx.
• New software I had to deploy on all of them to make them autonomus is: c1140-k9w7-tar.124-25d.JA1.

But how the whole process happenes? Here are all steps I took to make lightweight AP become autonomus wireless access point:

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