Hi Zillah,
Cisco APs comes in 2 flavor which is Autonomous APs and LWAPP APs.
Now Autonomous APs are the ones which are controllerd individually and have regular IOS image loaded on them WHEREAS Lwapp APs are the one which are controlled centrally by Cisco Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) which basically manages all the APs centrally.
HTH
Ankur
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