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Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

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Re: Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

#11

Post by sowbug »

anamexis wrote: post #4
Brajeshwar wrote: post #2

This is awesome. I had always had a travel/pocket wi-fi router since a long-long time. Started from the likes of D-Link, TP-Link, etc and now my next target is to check out one from GL•iNet[1]. They are flashable with OpenWRT. Their Beryl AX[2] looks spicy. I find the benefit of a router with you when traveling are; - More secure (you can set it up the way you want). - Your device(s) do not need to be configured to w…

What do you typically hook the router up to when traveling?

Not the person you are replying to. It's not unusual to find a working RJ45 in a hotel room, and as a bonus they often don't have a captive portal.

Otherwise you can usually set up a router to bridge one WiFi network to another. Sometimes the captive portal screen just works on your computer that you're connecting to your own router. Other times you can sign in while connected to the hotel WiFi, and then clone your machine's MAC address so the network thinks the router has already signed in.

My favorite hack is bridging a congested hotel 2.4GHz network to my own personal 5.8GHz network, which benefits everyone if you are a family about to light up 5-10 more devices.

The WiFi-to-WiFi bridge isn't always very efficient, especially if the router has to multiplex the two connections using a single antenna, but speed isn't always the top concern.

Re: Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

#12

Post by squarefoot »

nshkr wrote: post #3

Pi knockoffs offer a unique form of supply chain and technical risks

If the Orange Pi is a Raspberry Pi knockoff, then the Raspberry Pi itself is a knockoff of the Foxboard LX832 which predated the first Raspberry Pi by at least six years.

Re: Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

#13

Post by Brajeshwar »

anamexis wrote: post #4
Brajeshwar wrote: post #2

This is awesome. I had always had a travel/pocket wi-fi router since a long-long time. Started from the likes of D-Link, TP-Link, etc and now my next target is to check out one from GL•iNet[1]. They are flashable with OpenWRT. Their Beryl AX[2] looks spicy. I find the benefit of a router with you when traveling are; - More secure (you can set it up the way you want). - Your device(s) do not need to be configured to w…

What do you typically hook the router up to when traveling?

1. Wired Ethernet Cable (RJ45). Almost all hotels have it. If you cannot find one, ask for it or ask right at the reception to give you a room with it. If on extended stays (Airbnb, Service Apartments), I plug one into the primary router to have my Wi-Fi. It is rare not to get one way or another to set this up. Carry one of those thin but lengthy RJ45s (such as the ones from Monoprice or Ubiquiti) with your router. They will fit well in your tech pouch.

2. Connect to the Wi-Fi, but run your own DHCP in the router to distribute your IPs to your devices.

References;

- https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=44504

- https://store.ui.com/us/en/pro/category/accessories-cables-d...

Re: Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

#14

Post by deeesstoronto »

I think it's also worth looking at mikrotik. I run a HAP ac2 for travel which is small, has dual Wi-Fi radios, and enough power for good speeds on IPsec VPN. It also supports wireguard.

They also have a tiny, less powerful unit (mAP) that may fit with some travel use cases.

Re: Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

#15

Post by litoE »

sowbug wrote: post #11
anamexis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you typically hook the router up to when traveling?

Not the person you are replying to. It's not unusual to find a working RJ45 in a hotel room, and as a bonus they often don't have a captive portal. Otherwise you can usually set up a router to bridge one WiFi network to another. Sometimes the captive portal screen just works on your computer that you're connecting to your own router. Other times you can sign in while connected to the hotel WiFi, and then clone your m…

> My favorite hack is bridging a congested hotel 2.4GHz network to my own personal 5.8GHz network, which benefits everyone if you are a family about to light up 5-10 more devices.

I do the same thing. It's failed only once: the /24 address space in my "internal" network was the same as the /24 used by the hotel's network and I didn't think to chrck. I brought down the hotel's router.

Re: Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

#16

Post by kortilla »

litoE wrote: post #15
sowbug wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you are replying to. It's not unusual to find a working RJ45 in a hotel room, and as a bonus they often don't have a captive portal. Otherwise you can usually set up a router to bridge one WiFi network to another. Sometimes the captive portal screen just works on your computer that you're connecting to your own router. Other times you can sign in while connected to the hotel WiFi, and then clone your m…

> My favorite hack is bridging a congested hotel 2.4GHz network to my own personal 5.8GHz network, which benefits everyone if you are a family about to light up 5-10 more devices. I do the same thing. It's failed only once: the /24 address space in my "internal" network was the same as the /24 used by the hotel's network and I didn't think to chrck. I brought down the hotel's router.

This is a misconfiguration. Your private address space should not leak at all towards the hotel router side. If it brought down the hotel router it sounds like you had some kind of loop between the “private LAN” and the “WAN”.

Depending on if the NAT configuration in the router is fully correct, it should even fully work if both are the same.

Re: Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

#17

Post by yardstick »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #2

This is awesome. I had always had a travel/pocket wi-fi router since a long-long time. Started from the likes of D-Link, TP-Link, etc and now my next target is to check out one from GL•iNet[1]. They are flashable with OpenWRT. Their Beryl AX[2] looks spicy. I find the benefit of a router with you when traveling are; - More secure (you can set it up the way you want). - Your device(s) do not need to be configured to w…

Agree, the GL Beryl works fantastic for my needs. Plus OpenVPN and WireGuard to where I need. A great travel router, used it as my main router while away from home staying in hotels for the better part of a year.

Re: Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

#18

Post by CTDOCodebases »

youainti wrote: post #7
Brajeshwar wrote: post #2

This is awesome. I had always had a travel/pocket wi-fi router since a long-long time. Started from the likes of D-Link, TP-Link, etc and now my next target is to check out one from GL•iNet[1]. They are flashable with OpenWRT. Their Beryl AX[2] looks spicy. I find the benefit of a router with you when traveling are; - More secure (you can set it up the way you want). - Your device(s) do not need to be configured to w…

I am using a gl-inet router as a main router for my apartment. I picked it up on sale and it has been wonderful. Much better than the Linksys I got on sale 4+ years ago.

Same. I have been using one for 6 months now.

It has replaced the modem/router that my ISP gave me. I still use this modem/router with the Gl-inet which is set up in bridge mode.

It's stable. No WiFi flake outs. The only time I have had to reset it is when I have updated the firmware.

Eventually I plan to switch to a pfsense based router and use the Gl-inet as a wifi access point when at home and a router when I am abroad. This way all my WiFi devices will work seamlessly.

Re: Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

#19

Post by cookiengineer »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #2

This is awesome. I had always had a travel/pocket wi-fi router since a long-long time. Started from the likes of D-Link, TP-Link, etc and now my next target is to check out one from GL•iNet[1]. They are flashable with OpenWRT. Their Beryl AX[2] looks spicy. I find the benefit of a router with you when traveling are; - More secure (you can set it up the way you want). - Your device(s) do not need to be configured to w…

Do they use a different fork/package for AdGuard home?

I'm asking this because the smaller models from them are limited to 32MB flash and 128/256MB RAM, which is way too less for typical AdGuard Home usage.

Personally I'm using some older Linksys WRT 1900AC/3200ACM models for my malware homelab and for the 1900AC the AdGuard daemon is constantly OOM once a few blocklists are selected.

Does anybody maybe know whether there's a fork that uses less memory and skips all the statistics and stuff that you won't need?

Re: Building a freedom-friendly WiFi pocket-router (2020)

#20

Post by ninjin »

yardstick wrote: post #17
Brajeshwar wrote: post #2

This is awesome. I had always had a travel/pocket wi-fi router since a long-long time. Started from the likes of D-Link, TP-Link, etc and now my next target is to check out one from GL•iNet[1]. They are flashable with OpenWRT. Their Beryl AX[2] looks spicy. I find the benefit of a router with you when traveling are; - More secure (you can set it up the way you want). - Your device(s) do not need to be configured to w…

Agree, the GL Beryl works fantastic for my needs. Plus OpenVPN and WireGuard to where I need. A great travel router, used it as my main router while away from home staying in hotels for the better part of a year.

Regarding GL Beryl (and possibly other routers of theirs), it is worth mentioning that you get significantly higher throughput with WireGuard. Thus, if you have the option of hooking up via OpenVPN or WireGuard, do opt for the latter.

On the topic of GL.iNet. I have had a good experience with their customer support as we tried to work out some issues likely related to hardware. They were patient and allowed me to swap between routers until we got it to work. Oddly the final solution was to put an unmanaged switch so that we had two switches separated by about 30 metres of Cat 6A Ethernet cable, rather than plugging it straight into the router. According to the specification, this should not be an issue from what I can tell. Still, given how helpful and patient their support were, the whole experience still leaves me as a happy customer - despite the obvious hack.

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