Okay, for some backstory, this has taken forever to understand. Turns out half the documentation for the Aironet 2700 is scuffed, and is completely misleading. So, this is a small guide that I'm writing for myself so whenever I need to set up another box of these, I won't have to spend two days trying to figure it out.
Okay, so assuming you've picked up a couple of these bad boys from your local electronics recycler or got them second hand some other way, you need to set it up. There are two ways of doing that: Getting a Cisco Wireless LAN Controller, or putting the AP into autonomous mode.
If you've got a Cisco WLC you probably don't need this guide, so assuming the WLC is a no-go lets get to converting this to autonomous mode.
The hardware that's needed is a router, a network switch, a computer, and a RS-232 RJ45 serial cable. The software you'll need is a copy of tftpd64, and a copy of the autonomous IOS Software fro