Why You Need a Pocket Router: Hotels, Airports, Airplanes, Cruise Ships – Stay Connected Anywhere!
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: https://amzn.to/4bn8JFm
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For my episode on VLANs, check out: https://youtu.be/9fLwFKGvmAY
mac address
you can also easily use a program called connectify which allows for example to take in the hotel wifi on your laptop and then set up a secondary SSID and rebroadcast out a secondary network for your other devices. One of my favorite things to do is set up an SSID in random hotels i'm visiting for myself to use, but name it something that makes people that may look at the wifi networks worried. Like something Chinese sounding and camera related lol. like WaFaHungMiCamSpy5ghz
If I ever find myself on such a trip with my family where I would need to set up something like this before Starlink direct to cell supports data (Yes, Starlink will be providing 5G cells from orbit that any device supporting 5G can connect to just like a more terrestrial cell tower, no extra hardware needed, SMS capability already tested); I’ll be sure to look into a decent pocket router
And for those who like to rock <suddenly Rush starts playing>
You don't need a pocket router, you need a more relaxed lifestyle. 🤷🏿♀️🤷🏿♀️
I am joking. I have a travel router with pfSense(VM) on a 7w 3.5" mini PC with VPN , snort, and some Dockers.
I forbid myself to have a Pocket router to avoid using the internet when traveling and focusing on what matters. For basic communications very secure methods exist without using a router.
Wow, I want one. So cool. Though I have no need for one, I still want it! This seems to be what my ISP provides for my home internet. There's the main Ethernet coming from the fiber optic converter; that Ethernet connects to the Wi-Fi router which, I'm pretty sure, does port forwarding for the other devices in my house. It sounds like roughly the same thing, but the home router is old, big, and clunky.
Great episode on Travel Routers Dave.
In large hotels cell service is often not reliable or slow for data, making a hotels wifi the only option, a travel router gives you a stable connection when you may be in poor range of hotels access point on your floor area and adding VPN helps keep you secure when traveling. Often the general public doesn't realize this until they have connection issues when traveling.
Can you put a pihole on one of these to increase security and ad-blocking?
What's that Dave? You're doing a live Q&A soon; excellent I'll be there. How cool would that be. 😀
Thanks for highlighting GL-iNet products, I've been using them for years, I travel and recently upgraded to the Beryl AX (GL-MT3000) which is awesome, feed it 1.2Gb/sec internet on a 2.5Gb/sec connection port and you get wifi 6 at 1.2Gb/sec speeds, from a "Travel" router!
What are the VPN/Wiregaurd tradeoffs when used in the travel router?
When the terms say you're allowed to use the connection with "one device", well that's exactly what you ARE doing. It just happens to be that the ONE device is a router. And you could say your company requires you to not make direct connections but have to go through a device with it's own security.
when i was on a royal cruise, i didnt pay for the wide open internet, i paid for the middle plan which i think is just social media sites. But by using a VPN it allowed me to do anything i wanted.
However Carnival is smarter, and VPN made no difference.
Would this thing fool even them into giving you wide open internet with a lower plan?
Used the now discontinued 'GL-AR750S-Ext' for a few years and it was really good. It'd always be handy if I had your skill at configuring these, too!
I’ve been paying for multiple internet connections for my people like a fool. This is amazing.
What is the make/model of the OCX USB hub you're using?
having 1 laptop and no desktops means you can connect to your computer 24/7 without an internet connection 🤡
Travelling with an Apple TV lol.
Just plug your laptop into the TV bubba, watch anything anyway you want.
No need to use the random cheap single port PSU that comes with this. A 100W USB PD Anker GaN that charges all your other stuff too would be a far better choice for example…
Amiga FTW
I have this exact model, super useful for wireless pcvr on the move too.
I have used a the Gli-net products for four years and love them. I have an older slate model that works great and a Brume-2 VPN router and love them both. I live the Netherlands and use the Brume-2 with PIA for my Apple TV streaming. Works great for streaming except Amazon prime. With the VPN running using open VPN. I get from 150 to 50 up and down.
I have never tried to use it in the air pane and will try it next time.
Dave thanks again for the video !
The vision pro has a head router for another few thou.
I'll never buy a router that is not supported by OpenWRT. Good choice!
I feel like this is exactly what my phone already does because I have been doing all this with my phone for years.
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.
I used a Belkin travel router to make a staff wifi network downstairs at work. Work's APs upstairs but the networking is in the staff room. Plugged it in, connected and configured…..boom! Staff Wifi downstairs! The best bit is I was given the router for free! With plug adapters in case I need it for a holiday 😉 Super interesting video! Thanks Dave!
You da man
I just rename my laptop to H0NeyP0T_Malware_0x02 when I'm traveling.
Back when I worked for a certain company I won't name we had all our traveling sales people and execs using RSA authenticated VPN to get on the corp network while away.
One week I got some calls that some of my people were having a hard time getting in to their database dashboards.
Turned out a certain executive was in the habit of checking their dashboard numbers and clearing their inbox then binging Netflix.
From inside the corp network, over a VPN.
This would have been fine if they had been in their office.
But all of our VPN users were on a subnet that was bandwidth limited. After all it was only meant to serve a half dozen users checking in on their database.
RDP was open, but users were supposed to be using the intranet web front end to the DB. Not RDPing to their desktop..
But execs are big babies, so someone had set them up with an RDP link to their desktop so 'everything will look the same'.
They binged Mad Men and swamped the connection.
I had to remote in to their laptop and set up the intranet dashboard and drop links on the desktop for them.
Thankfully I got it done before IT from corp HQ came in and locked down our network. Removing RDP and a few other ports.
I retained RDP for myself by proxying through our affiliate location. We had a disaster recovery arrangement with them, so there was a mostly unused WAN connection with almost no port security.
Great Video Dave !
My 5 year old s9 can create a hotspot and connect to an other wifi point simultaneously and pass traffic (natted on phone). For the times i need this, my phone is sufficient.
If you need this 24/7 then a router might be the better choice 🙂
Captive portals don't always run on port 80 or 443. Some devices might block this traffic.
Thanks, I've had this model for about 18 months. I didn't know that you could add a USB hub!
What’s the difference between getting a raspberry pi 5 with raspberry connect WiFi ap enabled on it?
Could you do something better with the setup ?
i think… if it has encrypted vpn, it'd be great to route through the home network for other purposes.
This functionality is built in to your phone…
well, except the fact that at least on android it does not use a VPN connection on the phone. But the general connection sharing feature…
I understand that using one of these may violate your TOS, but while trying to set up a regular router to use a phone hotspot as its gateway I experienced an issue where a test client device could no longer get DNS and was soon blocked from all Internet access by the carrier, even when bypassing the LAN and connecting directly to the hotspot. Other devices continued working normally (I only connect 1 at a time).
This block lasted for a few days without resolving itself. I contacted the carrier for help and they did something (~3 minutes) that allowed the device to start working again. They would not tell me what they did, but my only guess was that they had blocked my laptop's MAC address due to unauthorized activity.
I'm now afraid to mess with this even though it would help me use my printer on the same network as I use Internet. Can the upstream network see and control all of the MAC addresses in your LAN? If so, would a VPN help?
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.
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!
How is this any different than just a small router that's a lot cheaper?
I can do all the same stuff with a small home router!
"did my own research as people like to say"
is crypto really that main stream? I'm seeing people borrow terminology more and more. I never heard DYOR before I got into investing, and mostly in the crypto space. like that wasn't ever a term for researching which component to buy…
How I have been getting around my travel router not being able to find the captive page is to set my device (iPhone, laptop, etc.) DNS manually to the DNS IP the travel router is using to connect to the “public” WiFi DNS IPs. Works every time.