So I’ve seen the TP-Link and GL.inet travel routers, and it looks like some of the GLs are/were built to run wrt firmwares. Stock TP firmwares have been pretty full features in my experience. I really want USB-C power. The GL wireguard support looks useful too, but it looks like their newer stuff is proprietary? Another want, not need, is 5 GHz band.
Does anyone have a favorite model or another board that can be flashed?
I use the GL.inet Shadow and have been happy with it. If you want 5Ghz and don’t mind that it’s a little larger (still small), I’d consider the Slate. It supports the latest version of OpenWRT. https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-ar750s
They include a custom GUI on top of OpenWRT, which I like. But LuCI is still there.
I have a slate (705S) and I love it. I have a wireguard server set up on an RPi at home and when I travel I plug in the slate, connect it to the hotel wifi (or Ethernet if I can), and flip the switch to turn on the VPN. All my traffic goes through my home connection, and I can still access my internal services.
I’ve even used it to save the day when an AirB&B’s wifi was too weak for the living room smart tv to connect when the family wanted to watch a movie.
What’s the usage scenario for a portable router? I’ve never really understood the benefits of one.
Disclaimer: I hate cruises and the entire industry, but ended up getting roped into a few before COVID by weird family dynamics.
I found a portable router to be pretty handy on cruise ships. The only Internet available is through the ship’s WiFi, and the Internet package I had limited connectivity to a single connected device per cabin. The travel router would be the single MAC and allow all our devices to connect. I was also able to share with family in the next cabin over.
A few months ago I stayed in a hotel for about a week and I couldn’t get my Nintendo Switch to connect through their Wi-Fi. My Switch also doesn’t work on my phone’s hotspot for some reason, even though other devices connect and work fine. Anyway, that scenario would’ve been nice for a travel router, but I didn’t bring it with me on that trip.
This actually is maybe the most legitimate usage of a travel router that I’ve ever heard.
If I ever find myself planning to go on a cruise (highly unlikely), I’ll be purchasing a travel router.
I just think they’re neat!
The wireguard tunnel is what I’m most interested in. Having that, and then my pihole, be handed out via DHCP is worth $50. More than that is a harder sell.
I just have wireguard setup on my different systems (phone, laptop, tablet, etc.). Just flip it on/off as needed…
Honestly, I guess I loath the idea of carrying another electronic device…
I could understand them a decade or more ago when not every phone was Hotspot ready, but now days I’d just use PDANet
I bought the GL-AR750S a while ago and kept it stock. It’s a customized version of OpenWrt with an “advanced mode” that lets you get into what I believe is just the regular wrt configuration portal.
I didn’t have anything that the router couldn’t do from VPN to repeating to spoofing Mac to get through cafe-style portals at hotels.
Looking at their website, it looks like their newer models still use wrt https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/start.
As others has pointed out, I’m using the GL.inet 750s (slate), I’m in a hotel right now using it! I got mine several years ago and I’m not sure how easy they can be found now. Like you pointed out, I wanted to run stock openWRT on it, it wasn’t available when I first bought it, but now it is a supported device. It’s nice, I keep two backups, one for wired ethernet (when the hotel has it) and the other is for wifi where I connect the 2.4 radio in client mode to the hotel internet and the 5ghz radio in master mode as an AP and bridge the ethernet ports. It works well, but it does have a micro USB for power.
