So if you follow my on the /r/homelab subreddit you might have seen my post about my network diagram. and if you saw that the is a good chance you saw that I was rocking a single Cisco 1131 AP which I got many complaints about (with good reason). What I did not show is the extra Cisco 1231 which I had just finished configuring and was ready to install in my shed to get much needed WIFI to our garden which not only lacked WIFI but also 3G/4G making it impossible to browse reddit in the great outdoors and we cant have that.

Buy a Cisco Virtual Wireless Controller License 5 Access Points or other Network Management Software at CDW.com. Cisco vWLC Virtual Wireless Controller - The Cisco virtual wireless LAN controller (vWLC) is software that can run on hardware that is compliant with an industry. Cisco Vwlc Keygen DOWNLOAD (Mirror #1). Vwlc free download. So I downloaded the ISO for Cisco vWLC 8.2.130 as it appears to be a stable release and cisco still recommends 8.0 so 8.2 is like rocket science in comparison. Mounted that sucker in my XenServer in a new VM and installed which worked great actually. Just wont boot without 2 interfaces (int 1 is management, int 2 being service and any extra. Cisco Vwlc Keygen 7/6/2018 How to Configure HA on Cisco WLC using GUI The Cisco Virtual Wireless LAN Controller (vWLC) is available with two types of software images starting with the 8.2 release: small-scale image.

Both the 1131 and 1231 were autonomous AP's so I had to configure the same SSID on both and just pray that the client would pick the best AP. but recently I have been doing tons of file transfers and was looking at getting a 802.11N or 802.11AC system to replace the 802.11G gear and decided that one AP would not work and I needed multiple APs (at least 3 maybe 4) to get fast speeds both indoors and outdoors.

So I spent months looking at different vendors which I will list below for your delight

Cisco
Ubiquiti
Ligowave
HP/Aruba
Netgear (don't ask)
And Sophos, Mainly because with that I wouldn't need a controller as I run a Sophos XG box which is the controller

Now I have my reasoning behind why I picked Cisco. and it boils down to a proper enterprise controller (not some windows software like ubiquiti) and tons of features most of which I will never need. And I liked my existing Cisco setup and thanks to eBay Cisco came out on top not in performance but in price to performance which is more important for me.

Time to buy and setup

So I decided to go with Cisco again. but I wanted to ditch the autonomous AP's as it turns out more than 2 AP's will drive you insane in that config.

I originally planned to get a Cisco 2106 or 4402. but as loads of people told me it can not do AireOS 8.0 and higher which is a big deal as you miss out on 802.11ac support, the awesome new dashboard and more importantly 802.11r roaming which according to everyone on the web is amazing

So the next choice was of course the Cisco 2504. but... its more expensive than my new Skylake i5 desktop which I built for video editing so... kind of not an option so at this point the whole WIFI project went dark and I was on the edge of not going Cisco and instead LigoWave after trying the controller software out in a VM

But then someone on reddit pointed out that since AirreOS 8.1 the Cisco vWLC does not require license keys and is done on the honor system like the Cisco 2821 IOS images being the only thing between having Callmanager or not

But the ISO image was near impossible to find and I did not run ESXI.

Then a few months later something strange happened with Cisco's software site. many things went from requiring service contracts to just requiring login from phone firmware like the 7971 to the Cisco vWLC ISO image's.

Umm... that is not a supported config

So I downloaded the ISO for Cisco vWLC 8.2.130 as it appears to be a stable release and cisco still recommends 8.0 so 8.2 is like rocket science in comparison. mounted that sucker in my XenServer in a new VM and installed which worked great actually. just wont boot without 2 interfaces (int 1 is management, int 2 being service and any extra being for ports or in the case of XenServer extra VLAN's on their own ports as it cant do tagged vlan's)

Install was a breeze once I created the network interfaces. just run through the config guide. setting management IP and Service IP, making a mobility group and setting up NTP and we was basically done.

To log in all you have to do is point your browser to https://(management IP) which for me is https://10.0.5.254. Accept the SSL certificate error and then login with the credentials created during the install and then you get this fancy dashboard

This dashboard is really cool and you can click around for ages finding tons of information. I can even see what brand of device is connected, only issue with that is one iPhone which comes up as unknown and a Windows Phone shows up as WindowsWorkstation so does Windows10 laptops instead of Windows10Workstation which is odd.

for now we are not interested in this though as on a clean install it will be mostly blank anyway. Click advanced at the top to get the usual Cisco WLC configuration page

At this stage I went into the management tab and software activation and activated 20 AP's. Note that if this was a business I would be buying licenses but for a Homelab I don't see a reason to pay for it. if you really want to its £450 for 5 AP's or £97 for just one AP which for lab use is crazy and although I am not sure on the legality of adding licenses without paying I don't see any issue with it for lab use as its not a business.

So once the controller is up and running you need some access point to associate with it.

Adam's guide to used Cisco Access points

Now the are plenty to of AP's to pick from but we need to be using a version of the Cisco vWLC that is 8.1 or newer due to to much more relaxed licensing which allows us to have an infinite evaluation which might have some legal issues but for home use you should be fine.

8.1 and up removed support for a bunch of AP's basically all the ones that was 802.11G only so 1130,1240 and even the 802.11n 1250 so avoid them however cheap they might be.

If you are going for 802.11n then you have 2 viable choices. Cisco 1142 or Cisco 3502. the latter having Cisco Cleanair which will be better suited to a more built up area. I live in the middle of nowhere and the only other AP nearby is our neighbors ISP provided router so I opted for the much cheaper Cisco 1142

1142's can be had for £30 on eBay all year long and their a decent AP still being able to do 300Mbps which is fine if you don't have a internet connection faster than 100Mbps down (remember wifi is half-duplex so 300Mbps is more like 150Mbps)

The 3502's are much better thanks to being fully supported in 8.1 up (1142's are on a feature freeze whatever that means) but they cost considerably more, £50+ usually and much harder to come across but the Cleanair technology is awesome if you have a ton of neighbors all with crappy TP-link routers or just a ton of people with wireless security cameras which use the 2.4ghz band for analogue video (bit rude if you ask me) it will magically fix it self instead of slowing down to a crawl like the 1142's would if something started hammering the channel its on.

If you want 802.11ac then you got options. the easiest to get hold of being a Cisco 3602 which is about £80-100 with an 802.11ac module which is like £150. not cheap like Ubiquiti but you pay more for Cisco and I prefer it over Ubiquiti personally. the is also the 1702, 2702 and 3702's which are current generation so hard to find used but the 1702 can be had for a decent price. some have even sold for less than £100 but they don't come up often but when they do they go for a max of £150 which is cheaper than the 3602 setup. brand new their about £325 but not paying that.

I personally am not bothering with 802.11ac as my internet connection is slower than 3G speeds and my laptop is not 802.11ac and that is the only device which could do with more bandwidth for file copies to my server.

As for the model of AP you need lightweight AP's these have a model number that starts with AIR-LAP or AIR-CAP. be careful as some eBay sellers will flash these with the autonomous firmware onto these and finding the lightweight firmware is a real challenge I have found.

The non lightweight AP's (model AIR-AP or AIR-SAP) can be converted to lightweight if you can source the firmware and are happy to go through the process of re-flashing it. however I have found that the standalone AP's are actually harder to get so unless you find an amazing deal on a standalone one then I would just search something like Cisco (c