The ESP8266 WiFi Module is a self-contained SOC with an integrated TCP/IP protocol stack that can give any microcontroller access to your WiFi network. The ESP8266 is capable of either hosting an application or offloading all Wi-Fi networking functions from another application processor. This module comes with AT commands firmware which allows you to get functionality like Arduino wifi shield, however, you can load different firmware to make your own application on the modules’ memory and processor. It’s a very economic module and has huge and growing community support.
