Why You Need a Pocket Router: Hotels, Airports, Airplanes, Cruise Ships - Stay Connected Anywhere!
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- Опубликовано: 1 фев 2024
- Dave explains what a pocket router, or travel router, is and why you need one in your life. For my book on Autism/ASD, please check out: amzn.to/4bn8JFm
For the Slate AX 1800: amzn.to/49hKPt2
For my episode on VLANs, check out: • VLANs: How to Protect ... 
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Just a note that some places detect if you are using hotspots by checking TTL on TLS packets. It's easy to overcome by configuring router to always reset the TTL on the outgoing packets.
This is how to get around some cellular restrictions with a SIM swapped LTE modem. The provider may look for an atypical TTL value as the criterium for detecting a device that isn't a phone. I mean, I read that somewhere educationally.
@@Dwigt_Rortugalthat hasn't worked for me, setting TTL to 64 or 65 or whichever. Some data is still flagged as Hotspot. Not sure how they do it.
I route all my traffic over the blockchain.
Great idea!
@@JamesT65 180000ms not bad.
Ironically, I’m watching this video on a cruise ship off the coast of Argentina on my new pocket router which I just set up. This is absolutely genius as my wife and I have both of our phones and iPads working off of just one ship’s connection, saving big bucks.
Glad to hear it's working well!
And... You don't have to log off for her to log on! 👍😁
Thats why I go on a cruise
@@badawesomeYeah nothing says Luxury cruise like live streaming NFL while enjoying a beautiful foreign ocean/island visita with a drink in your hand
But only in your cabin or near the router , right?
I use a TP Link N300 for all the same reasons mentioned here. It's about $30, runs off a micro USB power supply of any sort, and is about the size of a headphone case.
Pro tip: My favorite hotel connection, if there isn't a dedicated Ethernet connection in the room, is to unplug the Ethernet cable from the smart TV and plug it into the travel router. It's WAY faster than the hotel wifi, especially during peak times in the evening, and there's usually no ecosystem to hack thru.
I do something similar at all the Vegas hotels. The phones in the rooms are voip and I just plug the Ethernet cable from the phone into my computer with a PoE block. None of them have DNS on the network. Buts that's not hard to get around.
I did this a while ago just to see if it would work and it did. So simple.
I did a search for N300 put a lot comes up, more so as Wifi Extenders, could you give the specific model number please? Is it like TL-WR841N ? Tnx
Oh wow. What a great tip!
@@makingcookingfixing Probably TL-WR802N.
I'm also a woodworker, and your title gave me a start...
Ditto
Router’s cut wood
It's why I clicked haha!
I thought the very same thing !!! 😂
😂😂😂
yup
Field service engineer here, I have almost the exact same device (mine isn't the new WiFi spec). It's absolutely indispensable when travelling, it makes setting up all your devices so quick and easy when changing locations, and running a vpn at the travel router is also another few steps saved. I find a lot of times that even WiFi 5 over a wired hotel line is much faster than using the hotel's wireless. Great recommendation Dave!
I found these a couple years ago as a recommendation for video production. As an event livestreamer you have several pieces of gear wired and wireless that have to be able to talk to each other on the same network. Sometimes it's hard to do with a network you don't have control over. Run it through a VPN and you can even have remote devices on the same network. It was a life saver. Connect it to a cellphone, while not a preferred connection, you can run a livestream production if you don't have internet otherwise.
It wasn't long that I loved working this way. I don't connect to any network I don't control without a travel router. I don't know how I lived before having one of these. Now I own 3. The one you are reviewing here and two of their older ones.
i have a Beryl MT 1300 that i bought a few years to have a network i could control in sketchy WIFI locations to use with a VPN as well. like yourself, i started doing live streams and also went to my trusty Beryl in that scenario. 1000% agree, i will never connect any other way when off my own network
Same, been using my own for this for off-site events with my employer for years because it just makes my life easier. Finally got them to buy their own a couple years ago haha.
Thank you Dave for the tip on the travel router. I've needed one and was not sure about it, but you explained just enough to get me going! Also, I was almost in tears with the Friendly Giant piece at the end! Thank you for that! 😁
The Friendly Giant - great show. Thx for doing this, filming it and sharing it with us. 👍👍👍👍👍
Great Episode! - I recall in the 90s/2000s at MS having a pocket router to deal with hotel networks and customer demos. they have come a long way!
Thanks. One of the first things I did when I switched to a job that required quite a bit travel was purchase a travel router. It served me faithfully for years but, unfortunately it only featured a wired connection and those are becoming pretty rare. I’ve been meaning to update and this video is quite timely. Thanks.
Love the Friendly Giant ending at the end. As a Canadian who grew up on CBC children's tv shows in the 80s I wholeheartedly endorse how you ended this video!
The Friendly Giant outro was so unexpected. Made me grin. :)
He's been using it for over a year at least already!
I too am an old fan of Rusty and Jerome.
As a Brit, I wondered why he always does an outro mentioning chairs, as a voise-over to "early on morning? (I generally just listen, rather than watch Dave's output)
Oh my gosh! I haven't thought of the Friendly Giant in years! I know we're a little off topic from the main video premise (which was really good), but that made my day! I watched that show on CBC also growing up in Detroit in the 70's, and once the 80's came around and I got into hair metal, "for another who likes to rock" took on a whole new meaning! Nice job on both the video, and the closing!!
your videos are like a list of things I've done or need! We (fam of 4) travel (and cruise) a lot so having the multi input router with built in VPN is brilliant. I usually bring a standard 5 port wifi router but this has so much more capabilities. Thanks for the informative videos.
Thanks, Dave, I don't always understand the technical details of your videos, but I nonetheless always learn something. This one was particularly revealing of the possibilities.
Thanks for this video. I live in hotel rooms 3 weeks per month. Been researching devices like this. Because of this video, I hit your link and bought one off Amazon, will arrive tomorrow.
Just got mine today. I was eyeing this exact one for some time so thanks for reviewing it! I’m headed on several trips this year and this will definitely come in handy.
love the simplicity in the explanation. Key to know.
I have the GL.iNet X750V2 (Spitz) unit. It's very similar, but a bit bigger with a 4G LTE modem built in. As a trucker, I don't always have access to WiFi, so I got a tablet sim with "unlimited" data, and it works beautifully. In fact, I'm using the LTE right now.
Cool, I didn't know they made one with LTE built in!
@@DavesGarageThey even have a 5g model! Useful for home internet.
@@DavesGarage They have a lot of models. GL.iNet is a interesting niche product supplier. Their wifi modems are usually higher price than similar China brands. Their core competitiveness is the embrace of openwrt. They put their openwrt firmware into most of their products. However their firmware is not standard openwrt. They do not open-source their openwrt. It fits the niche that a bit advance users want some advance function but do not want to build their own full-blown openwrt wifi router.
@@DavesGarageI’d love to see a review of one with inbuilt lte!
Greetings: "unlimited"? What is Ur definition of "unlimited"? Perhaps it differs from mine and the advertised?
this was a sweet, tightly spun out video on a much needed topic. been running one myself for ages and i was toying with upgrading it, but wasn't sure which one to go with. this narrows my candidate pool. also: the chairs/et al at the end was priceless. gave me a good laugh. thank you very much. :)
Your video came up on my feed and what a blessing! I love the inflections in your voice and your presentation was exceptional. I am about to press purchase and hope, as a layman to all things tech, that I am able to figure this out without too much stress. Love your ending to the video. Please save the rocker for me as I look to view your other videos. Again, thank you!
I’ve been missing your chair outtakes! Love it, Dave! 🤗
And BTW this is a great video and very informative. That little router packs a punch!
I got the AX3000 because I have multiple locations where I can use the 2.5G WAN port. The Samba implementation is the slickest and easiest I have ever seen. It will even easily share an NTFS formatted drive without issue. I sync what I want to take from the home LAN and it shares perfectly from OpenWRT. I really love this unit. The fact that it is easily managed from the phone app is a super bonus.
I use the GLinet battery powered router constantly on planes. Works great!
Dave, another great easy to follow video. You've convinced me to get one of these for our travels with our RV. It does have a wifi range extender, but not impressed with it at all. It "phones home" way too many times, is only N 2.5, and outdated. I see a lot of full time RVers cobbling systems together, and this device paired with star link should do the trick. I stumbled on your channel and subscribed and watched just about everything. Being a kid growing up in the PNW in the 80s, you lead the life i wanted to go down, but just was to competitive for me. Keep up the great work and content.
I love it! I was looking for a device exactly like this one. I appreciate that you took the time to put this information together and sharing it!
I scored one of these for $80 recently and it’s a no brainer. WireGuard back to a UDM Pro is reliable.
Thanks, Dave. Very informative. I recently stumbled on to a low cost glinet router when looking for small open source router for a robotic project. I wanted the robot to have its own internal network, but be able to grab Internet over wifi from wherever the robot happened to be for which it had credentials. Works great. The model I used is about $24, but there lots of options for model, as you mention in your video. For me, running the mini router directly off a DC power source was a big feature.
Thanks for suggesting this travel router. I’ve been using a TPlink travel router for a number of years, but this unit has a lot of great additional features. It might be time to upgrade.
Outstanding video🎉. Right into the details ones needs without all the fluff! Thank you. I have added this to list of next things to have in my travel kit.
That programmable side switch is 👌 Hardware means to turn on/off VPN is super useful. Consider me convinced.
Agree with everything Dave said... I own this model, replaced it for the 750 Slate. Best travel router out there for anyone who spends a lot of time on the road.
Thank you very much, Dave. I can use this information and will follow your advice. I will also delve into the matter. Glad you're doing this!
Just as I'm about to research building my own device similar to this, Dave's has come along with a tried, tested and recommended solution. 🎉
Amazing thank you
Years ago, before you could buy these, I hacked one using iptables on a Raspberry Pi and an extra WiFi dongle. It worked pretty well, but I did run into the very occasional hotel login page that wouldn't display. Most of the time I just had to update my browser, but once or twice I think some hotels had IE based pages (IE was not a high priority on early RPIs). I built the device because of the ideas you mention, and also that the security for many hotel networks puts each node on its own VPN to keep (slowdown) one guest from hacking others. Some appliances like Chromecast expect to be on the same local network as your phone or tablet. Even on travel, I didn't want to miss my Netflix binge shows.
Before you could buy these? The Linksys WTR54GS Wireless G Travel Router with Speedbooster came out 7 years before the first Raspberry Pi.
I never worked for Microsoft directly but I was a consultant contractor for a number of years, MCT MCSE MC all those letters😂
And this is brilliant I'm watching your video now I'm not at the end yet I'm getting ready to travel and this looks like it is the ticket I appreciate you I just subscribed and give you a like
Dave, thank you! I always love your videos. Great useful information as always.
Great episode and love the Friendly Giant reference. Love your shows.
I have a similar unit, the GL-MT3000 (Beryl AX) which is great. I used in the Solomon Island's as my primary router for a couple of months connected to Starlink and also adding a 4G USB dongle as a fail over. It worked great. Had to power cycle it every now and then but I worked well.
Can you please mention how you power cycle it?
@@johnchristian7788 Unplug the power cord for a few seconds, then plug it back in.
all info, zero filler
thank you
Except first 3 minutes about career, other former business, wife, children, etc.
Love your sense of humor sir. Thank you for the content! 😉
Great episode. Thanks for the overview. I appreciated the hat tip to the friendly giant at the end. Growing up in Buffalo, NY, we picked up the TV broadcasts from Toronto and Hamilton, and the surprising bit of nostalgia at the end was a real bonus! 😀
Nice one - If I'm at a cruise ship or plane or similar, I usually just share the internet connection with my phone (S20). Works well so long as whoever I'm sharing with, isn't too far away.
Dave, I know it's the subs & likes where you focus, but I hope you also read comments. You aren't just a guy on RUclips. You're a reliable, legitimate, authentic technology resource.
For me, you are a staple of my technology diet. This info was both fascinating and practical. I will have to come back to it to digest everything, but I can tell it was robust and practical. I hope you'll keep doing exactly this thing exactly this way.
Also, thanks awfully for not putting me through the tedium of reviewing all the losers. I was truly only interested in the one you chose.
Same thanks
Forwarded to a bunch of fellow sailor friends
I bought this router about a year ago. It is excellent for travel. Also got a Firewalla Blue for cheap and connect it to my travel router and get that extra layer of security with deep packet inspections. Great video!
Awesome video, Dave! I'm so glad I subscribed. I'm definitely going to look into this gadget!
nice video dave nothing like wrapping up my friday and ordering a new pocket router.
I got three of those puppies I do enjoy myself control over a network.
I’ve spent a decent amount of time travelling and your tip with making an open VPN server and then routing back to it via this pocket router is exactly the solution I’ve been looking for!
Thanks for the great videos, I only learned about your channel a few weeks back and I’ve already learned a lot!
Its super cool that you share your knowledge with the world. We appreciate it.
Hey, I understood everything in this video! 🥳 Usually, I understand about 30% to 40% of what you say because of the specialized high tech jargon. I keep watching hoping that it will all start to make more and more sense one day. Excellent video!!!
I understood 20%😢 I sooo low tech we had Party Line!
Ive been using the Gl-inet pocket routers for years. They are awesome! One of things they are great for, aside from rebroadcasting wifi, is link aggregation. Beign able to add multiple WAN connections is great. I would never travel without one.
Its said openwrt on the box, so is there any big difference between using this over a used router flashed with openwrt? I'm trying to figure out how to set one up with a high gain antenna so I can pick up my buddies internet down the street with a high gain directional antenna
Presentation - Simply Outstanding!
Great video. I don't travel as much anymore but can think of many instances where this would be useful. Thanks for making this video!
Another place where this is extremely useful: on my sailing yacht. In any port, you usually get only one account, for free, but limited to one device. Same idea as in planes or cruise ships. I didn't know these existed, you saved my day, week, and year!!
First world problems. LOL
You can share WiFi from the device that's connected to the public WiFi. Don't need extra hardware.
We all use them on our yachts
@@LeifNelandDk Not via ethernet
@@bigdaadio.K2WW I don't see many places where you get an ethernet port to plug into.
But you can share the "ethernet internet" over WiFi.
You could theoretically add a switch and have two IP addresses on the same nic, and route between them, but that would require static IP's on your own net. That's too messy, just get a router then.
Dave, your prompt game is on point!
OMG the Friendly Giant! As a Canadian of a certain age I have seen that outro hundreds of times
Great info and I absolutely LOVED the whistlindiesel reference!
I couldn't be happier than I am since this 1st time visit.
I thank you for teaching me and all viewers.
We thank you for caring for us users that don't know any of what you said. I appreciate your brain and skills.
Bless your family and I think you have 4 girls in the home.
We want to care for our family so your care for us , I thank you for.
I love the spoofed mac trick 😂
Thank you man !!!! I'm a ship captain and i could not connect to my PSN without a very complicated VPN ...and so on...now you made my life much easier !!!!!!
Thank you for this great episode. I will be getting a pocket router for exactly the reasons you discuss. Internet on a cruise ship is an expensive and often slow exercise.
Totally did not expect the whistlin diesel out of a tech channel like this. Nice!
5:22 been doing this ever since Hulu started the whole “non-mobile devices have to come from the same IP” so my second house routes over the main house and I can watch streaming.
I purchased one of the less than a week ago because I needed something for a ClearNode (for ham radio). Great little router!
Ah the good old Amiga reference. Brings back a lot of memories (A500, A1000, A3000, and A1200). Loved that platform back in the day.
I noticed that too. Ah, the good old days...
I've had one of the devices (Huawei) living in my car for a few years with a cellular connection. I don't know how I ever lived without it. I live on a small, holiday destination island and when we have visitors stay, I give them the wifi password to my house and then even when we go out in the car, to the beach, etc, they all still have wifi and we're all still connected to my home network through the VPN. It's so reliable that I forget that it's even there, and my guests think it's sorcery.
Yup china has all your data 🤦👍
I feel smart. Just bought the router one step down GLinet's product stack a couple weeks ago. The only difference is slower VPN speeds, but that's ok because hotel internet isn't fast enough for that to matter. And it was only $40.
Why thank you for this wonderful kind of product!
I think I will buy one when I could because it's really useful in case of travelling.
I've had the older beryl 1300. for almost 2 years now and love it, have been meaning to pick one of these newer ones up so i can. have it permanently setup in the car
Oooh! Oooh, ooooh!
Ad-blocking through the router!
@Dave. I'm happy to learn that you finally have a very nice (5Gbps) Internet connection. A few years ago, I recall that you mentioned that you couldn't (at that time) get Gbps-class Internet. So YAY !! Happy for you and your family.
Nevermind the speed, the reliability and latency of fibre is awesome
Man, we've got a gig fiber connection, and most of the time, we barely approach its full bandwidth. 5 gigs is some serious torrent action!
Going back to the subject of the old-school Internet connection on a cruise ship, that sounds a lot like our old connection out here before even ADSL came to town. When we first moved in, I had this cheap satellite provider that used a dish for the downlink and 56k over copper for the uplink. "Broadband," they called it, assuming all your bandwidth consumption was needed on the download side. Committing to a contract for that provider was a big mistake. It was okay during off-peak hours, but when everyone got on the satellite in the evenings, forget it. Smoke signals or torches on hilltops were more effective.
Thanks for the video!! We go on cruises and didn't know about these. With the Starlink now on cruise ships this should be great! I am a retired EE and computer enthusiast who started in the 80's with Timex Sinclair, Vic-20, Commodore 64, then PC clones. Used PCs with Turbo Pascal to control production systems in the 80's-90's and I loved it. Got this router (happened to be on Walmart flash sale) and then learned it had OpenVPN built in. Was in the process of setting up OpenVPN on a computer but this was so much simpler. Bought their new BerylAX travel router (again Walmart sale luck) and setup a VPN at home using these little routers.
They must have learned from someone about the idea of being a "travel" router. The Slate was same as yours with only US adapter. The Beryl came with three plug adapters making it a true travel router.😃
Super interesting and useful. Thank you. PS the mini chairs at the end are BRILLIANT
Dave, Apple TV now allows completion of any required WiFi authentication through an iPhone or iPad. That said, using the pocket router and VPN through home is brilliant when traveling outside of your usual digital rights management area.
Good to know that this segment has finally been addressed.
Around 2014 I had a job that required a lot of travel and there were only two solutions I could find; a Netgear product marketed specifically to people who traveled and needed to use WiFi as WAN , and a product Peplink was marketing to people with RV's
The Netgear product had a long standing bug that would cause it to reset every couple minutes if actually used it for it's primary use case. The Peplink router worked really well except that it was poorly documented and took a really long time to boot (the two of which are supremely annoying if you're troubleshooting hotel wifi BS and it wants to reset with every setting change).
OMG. You played the Friendly Giant at the end. I am travelling back in time...
Hey Dave, just wanted to let you know that I appreciated this video! We went overseas recently and I picked up one of these routers to use for the duration of the trip and it made a real difference for us! I was able to connect my whole family on one device on the plane, and then when we were at our destinations, we were able to connect securely instead of on an open wifi connection and with AdGuard turned on. I even ended up using the ethernet from the back of the television trick mentioned in the comments here in one hotel.
Reviews online suggest the device reports back to China using factory firmware, but that is not a big deal because technical users can simply flash OpenWRT themselves. I'm really familiar with OpenWRT , and so I may try this out.. Thanks Dave!
But what if you are not technical?
@@hanginglights7874 Dave's audience probably leans towards technical, but if otherwise... OpenWRT's web-ui has a straight forward way to flash firmware, which non-technical users could eventually learn how to make work, or seek technical support.
@@hanginglights7874This dipshit doesn't care. Their comment was solely for self-aggrandizement.
One thing you have to watch for is address conflicts between your home network and the remote location. Years ago, I used to travel a lot with my work. On occasion, I couldn't use my VPN because the hotel used the same subnet as my home network. I then moved my home network to the 172.16 range, as the 192.168 & 10 blocks were often used elsewhere. I've only once seen 172.16 used elsewhere.
An easy workaround for this is a second travel router. Use that to convert the location's IP range to something else.
@@eDoc2020 Why not just change your subnet? It's very easy to do and that way you avoid the problem. Also, you still have to configure those travel routers to avoid conflicts with either end of the VPN. Of course, the best solution is to use IPv6. I can connect my VPN via either IPv4 or IPv6. It works well either way. Also, with IPv6 you don't need NAT and all the problems it brings. With IPv6, you don't have the address shortage that made NAT necessary. I get 2^56 IPv6 addresses from my ISP.
@@James_Knott It's not practical to renumber your entire network every time you stay someplace that has a conflicting network. 172.16 is common enough it's still an issue. I agree if you can go all-IPv6 the issues would be solved.
@@eDoc2020 That's not what I'm saying. What I said is that subnets in the 172.16 block are rare, based on my experience setting up equipment in many, many businesses. There are 4096 /24 subnets in that block to choose from, so throw the dice to pick one.
Correction, I have a /56 prefix, which provides 2⁷² addresses.
I love your videos Dave. Always interesting. Thank you.
I have this exact model and love it. No getting everyone online every time the family travels, no resets for everyone every 24 hours, and NOT paying $20 and up each device! Great video!
Dave, would consider doing an audiobook version of your "Secrets of the Autistic Millionaire"? You already have a great voice and likely all the equipment.
I have that same slate and the gl750 that they released an sdk for.
It's funny I was on a cruise for 14 days. I had a balcony and took my gen 3 flat dish with me mounted in a 1615 air case with a delta 2 power bank and a pair of 200w cigs solar panels rolled up in the starlink case.
And a small case for regular clothing and a big case for my suit. It cost me 250$ for that month but I had full 55mbps + down and 20mbps up the entire trip I had friends in other rooms on the top deck I ran a 40ft cat 5e and used a 8ft pole on a seasucker camera mount to get the ap out over the side to make the hidden said network available to about 80% the people I knew on the ship this when into a capture portal on that same travel router where that had to pay me 1$ per gigabyte.
This ended up covering the cost of the starlink kit.
But not the mods or service used and honestly was more a nerd thing on a ship with other over age nerds.
Why did you even get on a cruise ship? Wasn't it enough to find the video "Sea waves (10 hrs)" on RUclips and not bother leaving the house?
@tolep it was planned with hundreds of people from conventions as a group. Just think of it as a way over 1000 gaming friends from online forums decided to party.
For the most part the cost of a cruise isn't a big deal either a lot of have camera lenses that cost more than both combined
@@ZoeyR86 What I meant was the irresistible need to be online all the time and with a good quality connection.
@tolep we did live podcasts and twitch streams of the events
Agree, Dave. I got a GL-iNET Beryl AX router for Christmas and it was great on a recent trip - took my Roku as well and it was great to not have to keep logging in to hotel WiFi with multiple devices. To just be able to flick a switch and enable my private VPN was great.
PS one reason I sometimes couldn't connect was when I forgot to disconnect the VPN when moving to a new hotel before trying to browse to the captive portal 😂
Thank you, Dave. I'll use your suggestion if I ever get on a cruise ship again.
The fact it runs openWRT should be emphasized! I'm tempted...
yeah glinet makes great stuff imo, hardware is solid and price appropriate (as in don't try to host for several families on a travel router or it will freeze up).
Takes a good company to embrace OSS instead of going for the infuriating "we ship our routers with a ton of so-called-cloud features (that we reserve the right to track and sell your data from! that's cool right?) you deeeefinitely want, we know you want them so much we'll actively pay our developers to try blocking you from removing them instead of fixing firmware bugs!"
It's false advertising. You have to use their version of OpenWRT, you can't use an official OpenWRT
I have a couple of these routers, but I hardly ever use them.
Instead I use an Android phone that offers "Wifi bridge" that shares its WiFi with all your devices as its own hotspot.
Furthermore, it's also dual SIM so I just add a local SIM when abroad.
I found the captive portal thing still a PITA with the router: the direct Android phone method is much easier as it has the web UI directly on the phone.
I could never get the VPN to work on these routers with my home router-based VPN, so I just use the client VPN on each device to target my home router's VPN DNS.
The only thing the travel router offers over an Android solution is a wired ethernet connection, which very occasionally is useful (I'm an embedded systems engineer, some test equipment only has ethernet, no Wifi).
Does the Android offer the same features and protection as the pocket router to connected clients, such as firewall and IPS?
you could connect the phone via VPN to your home network (that has all the features you want)
This was excellent 🙏
Love the pocket routers! I have a Mikrotik mAP myself. Great for working in network closets with no wifi of their own. It runs off of PoE as well, so I can just stick it to the rack and plug in the one cable and be golden!
Love your straight up narrative.
Best choice for pocket router - MikroTik hAP as or hAP Lte :)
And it even supports WireGuard.
WG, ipsec, openvpn, sstp, l2tp, and now backtohome (wg with hole punching) @@techieg33k
GL.inet supports Wireguard too.
Mikrotik is very good for exports because even the cheapest model can do almost anything network related, even set up a BGP connection.
4:53 "Dave's Soviet Mini Phone" I want to hear that story!😂
Love the Friendly Giant ending at the end.
Wow. That was a lot of information but very valuable. Thank you so much.
Another, potentially bigger reason to use a travel router is because you can't trust the security of any public Wi-Fi setup or even Ethernet in the wall. By using a travel router, all your stuff is not visible to the hotel therefore safer especially after you turn on the VPN.
Absolutely. At the last hotel I where I stayed, on my way to the workout room, I noticed the door to the telecom room was wide open. I saw it that way the next morning too. There’s no telling what people might have gone in there or what they were up to. There was pretty good LTE service, so I turned on my phone hotspot and tethered to my phone. I didn’t go anywhere near the hotel’s Internet.
Most people will fail to realize this PERIOD. When you connect to another person's/business' Wi-Fi, you definitely don't know if they are monitoring and recording everything that is happening, if the network is isolating clients or not, etc, I remember about 18 years ago, at work, I had a wifi network in a conference room. So, on the afternoon of Day 3, this one guy drops by with a tech issue; he's been putting his laptop on my network for 3 days, but then on the third day he says "oh, by the way, I have a virus on my computer; is there anything you can do for that ? " .. Like WTF. How about bringing it to me BEFORE putting in on my network.
Does the VPN itself not protect you from those?
@@wouldoox8024 It does but a pocket router protects everything behind it. Like your computer, your phone, and your family's devices, and I have traveled with a Roku so it protects that too.
@wouldoox8024 by using a travel router for VPN, you only set up the VPN once. And all your devices use the router. All your children's devices and your wife's devices also use it.
I live north of the 51st parallel in Canada and I can't believe how much everyone's life in my remote area has improved since Starlink was launched! We do snowmobile rides and carry a small honda 2000 inverter generator and the starlink which both fit in a utility sled's rear rack. We ride to the middle of a frozen lake, pop up the starlink, start the generator and in max 10 secs you have internet that is 100% the same speed and latency as traditional cabled internet.
Also made us realize just how much we're addicted to tiktok and memes on the internet. We use the excuse that it's for ''safety'' and to ''keep in touch''...
How much does the travel feature cost? I heard if you leave your 'cell' that it doesn't work.
@@steveseeger roaming is an extra 40 CAD on top of the base 140
Satellite internet was always a thing. I mean I get Starlink is a better service but.
@@KevinJDildonik Setting up a geostationary antenna is at least a thousand times longer and so is the latency (starlink is 20ms, xplornet is 1200 ms)... Starlink is plug and play, no need to level or aim. I've had geostationary for over a decade before I got starlink and its an upgrade in every single aspect except energy consumption due to the servos and heating element of the starlink...
@@KevinJDildonik Traditional satellite internet is nearly unusable. Starlink is almost as good as typical high speed.
The technology is very advanced across all areas, but the big difference is how close the are. Starlink satellites are much closer in orbit and therefore there are 1000x of them vs traditional satellites. The problem with traditional satellite internet is latency, if you tried to use it for a phone call the other person waits almost a full second after you finish talking before they finish hearing you and reply back. In web browsing terms it's almost as bad as going back to dial up internet.
This video was vastly different than what I expected as I normally watch woodworking videos.
I was wildly confused for a second or two.
That said, this is a great idea that I didn't know was a thing.
CLEARLY not a dummy! I'm subscribing. Great pacing on your speaking. Well done. 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾
Good stuff Kenny. Im a retired network engineer and love these devices.
Who is Kenny?
@@PastThePoint I was having a senior moment… Kenny is a Minnesota RUclipsr. Sorry Dave!
@@noneya61 Totally understandable! I just wanted to ask. No worries!
Chromecast with Android TV has a built in browser and you can use that to log into hotel wifi. How do I know? I travel extensively for work and have used my Chromecast at hotels nearly everywhere. With an attached USB hub, you can also connect USB external drives, other devices, etc. And since it also is Android, you can install Android apps for VPNs, etc. And best of all, it is half the price of this router, as well as a quarter of the size (half if you are also carrying the USB hub). I used to travel with a TP-Link pocket router, but once I got my Chromecast with Android TV, I no longer carry it.
What an awesome review sir. I ad no plans of buying something like this but your video cold sold me 😀. Thank you!
Dave, I must say, you seem to be firing on all cylinders these days. Flowing in the zone! Great review, exactly the kind of device I've been thinking about lately, and once again thank you.