I would turn it around and say hotels with restrictive wifi policies are not fit for purpose. I’ve never been unsuccessful where free wifi was in place.
“Travel router” to me means two things: portable form factor and WISP. It does not mean successfully defeating per device wifi billing.
I hate when people break the internet with their DNS poisoning.
Funny thing about free WiFi, I was once in an airport with heavily filtered free WiFi, it was pretty bad even on common social networks. That was until I enabled Tor. Everything worked perfectly with Tor.
I would turn it around and say hotels with restrictive wifi policies are not fit for purpose. I’ve never been unsuccessful where free wifi was in place.
hmm, their purpose is to let each guest enjoy some decent wifi by restricting their speed and number of devices. Some small hotels buy a family plan of 10Mbps and “share” it with their 20 guest rooms… Like 100gb a month throttled sim card plugged into the router. Very normal in Asia.
“Travel router” to me means two things: portable form factor and WISP. It does not mean successfully defeating per device wifi billing.
→ yes. And it must support 3g/4g/5g sim card modem and host the promised number of devices very stable. Some will demand vpn.
Otherwise I am happy to use an old asus phone to make a very simple wifi to wifi Hotspot… Tada, portable and wisp.
That’s looking for trouble.
If it has to be mobile network, I can use my own.
If it’s residential/commercial FTTX I assume I can download at least 2TB/month.
Maybe this is the very reason why their older routers are more expensive than the new ones. Their business model is to launch first and be the first, and polish later. If you end up with a product that never succeeded… Oopps…
How much does a Slate AX cost if it’s branded CISCO or Asus, with all the features really working rock solid?
In my experience, even $500 Asus is not guaranteed performance these days. So many developers tweaking on openwrt and similar.
Id say about triple (see Netgear m1-m6 pricing) – and Slate AX isn’t cheap.
That’s looking for trouble.
If it has to be mobile network, I can use my own.
→ well, many people I know, when they travel it means, camping, hiking, off the grid. But yeah… There’s more and more 4g modem n wifi usb drive that don’t require pairing with a router.
That’s actually very good point, I have to reset my expectations, fair game
What??? WISP that does not actually function? Also how are you able to LAN your devices together (like a chromecast for example) by connecting each individual client to the host WiFi? Who is talking about “defeating” anything and why are other TRAVEL routers able to do this with no issues whatsoever? I am a bit aghast at your response and your condoning of the glaring shortcomings of these devices to be honest with you.
I take your point about other travel routers. I don’t have travel routers from other mfgs, so I take it on faith that other devices aren’t having this problem.TL-WR902AC Won't Connect to Hotel Wi-Fi - Home Network Community
I have at hand in my mix at the moment 12 routers, of which 3 are Gl-inet travel routers. Those 3, and only those three, are capable of treating a wifi signal as the WAN side of a router. The other 9 over wifi can extend (without routing or VPN or anything like that), or they can be an AP, or they can be a bridge. But they can’t route, and in the whole of the landing pattern of future devices from that manufacturer will never do that. (Fun fact: they have travelled a lot).
I have not been in a resort, hotel or a cruise ship in years, so that is somewhat unknown territory to me. I have been in tons of motels and AirBnBs with free wifi, but no resort fees, no wifi packages, no liquor packages, no minibar, no bellmen, no tipping. I am used to arriving in a place for a night or a few months, plugging in the travel router, setting WISP, and having the whole clown car immediately have the same internet they expect on every device (connected to the mothership, geolocated, no ads, etc). Sometimes they are return visits, and I don’t need to do anything. Feel free to contradict me, but every captive portal problem reported here has been with a place that is also trying to search your luggage for liquor.
I will be exploring a bit what Delta is doing given that FF members have free high speed internet on an increasing number of flights. Its captive portal has always been a little tricky, since I have mostly chromebooks.
My spanking Beryl AX has miserably failed to negotiate a captive portal on a small camping site on a small farm in mid England a couple of months back no matter what I have tried (and I have been around here long enough to have come across all the tips and tricks in the book). Purchased a basic TP-Link AC1900 WiFi extender at the time to try and it was literally plug and play. There is absolutely no excuse for these things not to function as they are meant to. I also have several WiFi extenders as well as routers form Huawei, Netgear and Teltonika that can all repeat WiFi and do NATing at the same time. I only carry GL.iNET during my travels due to the VPN Wireguard functionality (and favourable portability) that my other routers lack. Please make sure that you take one of the TP-LINK Travel routers ( I would recommend the TP-LINK TL-WR802N) with you on your Delta flight and report back on your findings.
If you want an extender you can have an extender.
just go: more settings → network mode
My religion forbids me from buying stuff powered by a usb micro-b port.
Sorry, not sure if you were referring to me in your post but if this is the case then your suggested solution would clearly indicate, with all due respect, that you have a lot to learn about how these devices work.
Yes, and there must be a reason that campsite didn’t work for you, have you been able to find that out?
Yes, it is because GL.iNET implementation of repeating WiFi and negotiate captive portals is absolutely pants. It has from day one when I purchased my first Mango in September 2017, and unfortunately appears to still be after all these years.
Ok, I was being a smartass, using a router as a dumb amplifier isn’t that useful.
But have you been able to understand what was about that captive portal that was different from all others?
I honestly believe that the problem lies strictly with the GL.iNET router rather than the captive portal which was quite a basic webpage asking me to enter a code given by the site to be able to then access the web. Even my Firestick with its most basic networking abilities was able to connect to the campsite’s wifi with no problems at all. These routers just refuse to play ball with some sites for some reason that is completely beyond me I am afraid.
It is not just about being able to get the router through the captive portal by trying each of the different steps (i.e., tricks). When I spend $10,000’s on trips (flights, hotels, cruises, cars, etc.), the last thing I need is to waste valuable time fiddling with a router.
My old Asus Zenfone 4, TP-Link TL-WR802N and TP-Link TP-WR902AC do not have problems with captive portals and they are small and light. The Asus smartphone also works as a wifi repeater, not only as LTE hotspot, so no data plan required.
I expect that a large majority of travellers, including me, are not much concerned about foreign ISP’s knowing the sites they go to and need to turn on VPN (can be done on the client device anyway). Similarly, I expect that a large majority are not much concerned about seeing ads and need to turn on AdGuard Home (can be done with browser AdBlock extensions). I always see people happily using their smartphones, tablets and computers connected to available wifi hotspots.
“ Feel free to contradict me, but every captive portal problem reported here has been with a place that is also trying to search your luggage for liquor.”
I have to disagree…
I also don’t do cruise ships, resorts, etc. Never been to any property where they are trying to see if I’m smuggling in liquor, etc., but I do stay at a LOT of high end hotels, all with captive portals. And these portals are simply a giant pain in the ass.
As others have noted, my Roku stick can easily navigate these portals, but it’s ALMOST ALWAYS” a struggle with my Gl-inet routers. My wife has learned to stop rolling her eyes as I spend 30-45 minutes trying to get the damn thing to authentic past the captive portal. Geesh!
Foreign ISPs we couldn’t care less. Hotels and governments? That’s another story. Do you want your hotel to know what your favourite porn site is?
Also, VPNs are about circumvention as much as encryption. If I’m in some random country their routing is optimized for what the locals visit, not for me. Or it’s heavily filtered. (No, it’s not just the country you think right now. There are several.)