A wireless local area network (WLAN) is established with an ESP8266 or ESP32
microcontroller, with networked devices requesting information from the microcontroller (see Figure
7-1). The WLAN does not have Internet access. The microcontroller is the
access point (AP) for the WLAN, consisting of the microcontroller and up to four devices, and is termed a software-enabled access point or
SoftAP
. If the microcontroller is connected to an existing Wi-Fi network, then the microcontroller is in
station (STA) mode. The WLAN client is the browser on a laptop, an Android tablet, ...