My experience with the AR750S-Ext (Slate) wasn’t good. I was unable to set it up to work as the OEM firmware uninstalled Luci. So I gave up.
I’m willing to give it another go.
I have chosen this device and hopefully things will be different.
My setup will be routing a Linux laptop through public wifi (a captive portal will be active at times as some locations will require you to either sign in or acknowledge their terms and conditions). I’m using ProtonVPN.
I have a GL-750S-Ext Slate running firmware 3.203 and did not have any problems with setup. I have it as a router with wireless WAN connected to another wifi for Internet and wired/wireless LAN for connection to Windows laptop, Android smartphone, Chromebook. OpenVPN and Wireguard both work also,.
I think the GL-750 Creta would be similar. What specific problem(s) did you encounter with the Slate? The GL.iNet online guides are good and should be followed carefully.
I have not tested going through a captive portal yet because I have not been travelling for a while. There is a tutorial for captive portals:
The Slate removed Lucy after I updated the firmware. I wasn’t happy and returned it for a refund. Maybe it was that particular device that was playing up (warranty issues?).
Anyway, I prefer to give it another go with a different model and came across this one.
Would like to hear from someone on this forum who is using it? Hope it doesn’t go through a troubleshooting process again.
Because many users don’t use LUCI, later versions of the firmware don’t install LUCI by default to free up memory. If you do want to use LUCI, you can just install it via the Advanced features or via the Plugins page.
I installed LuCI on my Slate with no problems and it works well.
Please note that Creta has much less flash storage than the Slate, which may limit installing additional packages that you may want later. Other forum posters have encountered lack of free space on their devices that only has 16MB flash.
I also am not clear whether Creta has gigabit Ethernet ports.
I remember now (it was Oct. last year so forgot about it, sorry). I returned the device because it was dropping the wifi connection all the time. It was odd since the router looked solid. I can live without Lucy as long as there is a way of making the device work. I really need that layer of security because I use unsecure public wifi most of the time accessed from a local library and free wifi here is very unrealiable.
Connectivity issues described already on this forum in the past:
AR750s Keeps disconnecting (very extensive thread, last post in October 2021, when I purchased and returned my unit to Amazon Australia).
I hope the company looks further into this because my experience was the same as described by the forum member “waponwapoff.”
NOTE: For the record. My connection is free wifi over a captive portal only acknowledging terms and conditions; no username and password are required. But in my particular case a shitty wifi is causing the router to disconnect all the time. Not blaming the device in that regard.
Maybe there is a setting that would allow the router to reconnect automatically after a wifi connectivity loss.
My Slate is running firmware 3.203, which was released in August 2021, and a lot may have been fixed since 2 years ago. Firmware 3.211 was recently released in January 2022, but I have not upgraded to it yet.
I also have a TP-Link TL-WR902AC, which is referenced in the 1st link and worked well. I recently bought the GL-AR750S-Ext mainly because it has external antennas, OpenVPN and more Ethernet ports.
To reconnect wifi automatically, you should enable the Auto scan and re-connect setting under Repeater Options.
Good on you but the device was too problematic for me at that time and have should have followed a deeper troubleshooting but I didn’t. I wish I did.
Regarding the TP-Link TL-WR902AC which I also have (I looked into GL-iNet routers to replace the TP-Link one). Not designed to work on iffy public wifi using a captive portal. I can’t connect the device. Asked customer support and they are still trying to figure out what is going on. I’m located in Australia, maybe it’s a channel-related issue which requires a firmware upgrade.
In fact, the TPLink travel router only list channels 36,40,44,48 as available options, which are the non-DFS ones. That would explain the lack of connectivity to the 5G frequency which is the one offered by the free public wifi network I normally access.