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I really like this travel router. It fills several needs for me.
My use-cases for this device include: Hotels (which often limit the number of devices connected), commercial campgrounds (which often have poor propagation), portable hotspots that limit the number of devices connected, and at home as a range-extender. Even for hotels that do not limit the number of devices connected, it's convenient to allow all of my devices to connect to this device so that I only have to set up one upstream connection rather than doing the captive portal dance for each device. In other words, I can connect this to the hotel wifi, and then all my other devices will just work without individually walking them through the hotel wifi authorization steps.
The most common use case for travel routers, I believe, is exactly that; log the router into the hotel's wifi, and all your devices that you've previously set up with the router will just work without the hassle of logging each of them into the hotel wifi. This is especially important when the hotel wifi allows only one or two devices. The other reason to have a travel router in a hotel setting is security. More on that later.
It's also useful as a VPN; you can connect it to a VPN, and all your devices that connect to it will benefit from the VPN. Once again, it's really nice to put the VPN on the router and not have to set it up on each device. Easier, and more secure since there's no risk of forgetting a device.
OpenWRT and the web-based GUI are nice to work with; powerful, feature-full, and simple enough. More router manufacturers should just use OpenWRT instead of their own (often inferior) custom firmware.
On first use I set it up at home. It's useful to remember to turn off "auto-connect" from your laptop so that it doesn't try to connect to your home router while you're in the middle of trying to get this router configured. Once you've done that, you follow the steps in the documentation. But they're really fairly straightforward and didn't have any surprised. It was also easy to update the device's firmware.
There are less powerful models out there; some that provide 802.11bgn, for example. This one provides 802.11ac, so better throughput than some inferior models. And because it is dual-radio, you can, if you prefer, connect the 2GHz band to the upstream router, and then your devices to the 5GHz band. Or vice versa. In theory this can perform a little better than using a single radio for both the upstream router connection and the downstream device connections.
The size is small enough to fit into my backpack's side pocket along with my travel 5600mAH portable battery pack. And it is lightweight.
For security, in addition to allowing for VPN setup, it also provides DNS over TLS through Cloudflare; free, and a lot more secure than unprotected DNS which lets your upstream provider to see your DNS requests.
So, no more asking my kids to drop their internet connections so I can get some work done while we're traveling. No more having to help everyone connect to a hotel's captive portal. Connect this single device, and all the other devices that already paired up to this previously will work automatically. Set everything up in spare time at home, take the router when you travel, connect it to the provider, and everything else works. Just what I needed.
Update:
I've now had this device long enough to also use it during a hotel stay. The hotel I stayed at had a couple of options: Wifi at a charge (limited to two devices), or wifi for free (rewards members only, and limited to two devices), or wired LAN. I travel with two small Thinkpad X1 Carbon laptops; one belonging to work, and one for personal use, plus my cell phone. So I have a need for three simultaneous connections. Although I'm a rewards member, and so entitled to free Wifi, it was so much easier to just plug the router into the hotel's wired network; all my devices are already set up to connect to the router's wifi, so I didn't have to go through a process for each of them. Without the router I would have had to keep my phone on 4G/5G data and would have had to do the captive portal sign-in for my two laptops. Because of the router, it was just a matter of connecting it to the hotel's network, and all three devices connected immediately.
Everything worked exactly as it should. So I'm pleased. And now I've been able to use it as a wifi extender (at home), and as a travel router at the hotel. The next test will be as a range extender at a commercial campground, where wifi is often not all that great.
Oh, one last useful feature I've discovered: TLS encrypted Cloudflare DNS: If you are privacy conscious, you may already realize that even if you are browsing the web using https connections, your DNS requests are visible to your ISP, or to your hotel, etc. With this device you can easily switch to encrypted Cloudflare DNS, which makes your DNS (domain) lookups essentially invisible to your ISP, your hotel, or anyone else in the middle who might be snooping. I'm not a big tinfoil hat person, but it is a little more reassuring that I have this extra level of privacy and security available.
At home I'm using the router as a range extender, an application it offers with ease.
I only wish that GL.iNet made full-size home routers, too.
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Site to Site VPN - working well
This device is a great multifunction router from Gl Inet. It can be a 2G/5G wifi travel router, or a wifi extender, or a guest wifi, or a VPN server, or a VPN client, etc. The amount of things this can be configured to do is amazing. My particular need was a Site to Site VPN connection to make use of a service that only works if you are in your home. I needed to send that traffic to the other home and out its internet for this purpose. Also I wanted devices that support wireguard as it's the leanest VPN protocol out there and I knew this solution would push a lot of data. I setup two of these on Glnet's Goodcloud service (which was free for one tunnel) to form a VPN connection to my remote home. After a bit of messing around with the routes, the tunnel worked and has stayed stable for 5-6 weeks at a time. I realize this is not a common configuration (for a home user) but these devices were up to the task. This is really just an example of the wide variety of stuff you can do with these. On the downside - the upgrade process for these is a bit sketchy and did not always work. As such I am sticking to v3.105.
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2020
- Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2019
- Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2018
Top reviews from other countries
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- Dutch FragrancesReviewed in the Netherlands on June 12, 2022
It is indeed a funcioning bridge
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Gustavo FloresReviewed in Mexico on April 9, 2021
La mejor Seguridad y Privacidad en movimiento!
