A wireless network software access point (AP) integrated into a wireless device allows a wireless network to be configured automatically and dynamically maintained with minimal user intervention. Such automatic configuration includes: whether to configure the Soft AP enabled device to be an AP Node or a Station Node; specifics of wireless radio link configuration, routing or bridging relationships with other networking devices attached to the host-computing device; and firewall configuration. Such automatic configurations are based on the automatic detection of the network environment attached to the Soft AP enabled device. The automatic configurations may also be based on the intelligent interactions among different Soft AP enabled devices in the wireless network, which often includes devices with and without Soft AP functionalities.