I’m agreeing with elorimer. GL-iNet’s power is the fact their stuff works with OpenWRT. The advanced OpenWRT can do amazing things here. I’m not sure if I would have had any of their devices if they didn’t have that. I honestly believe they are doing their best to find the best balance between size, power and features.
I do also like the GL-iNet own GUI to simplify common network configurations, but also some more advanced network setups. For the not-OpenWRT guru, that part is a massive feature!
I like the discussions when some relatively complicated setup with Adguard, VPNs etc fails to make a captive portal work. I frequently expect most of the time one of those more advanced features is possibly fucking the user over DNS rebinding might not work, or your captive portal might require bypassing the VPN rules. And you might be best off using the DHCP provided DNS servers instead of something else (like DoH?). I honestly rarely have trouble with captive portals on my travelrouter config, but I also have multiple LAN networks in there. One which is the plain and simple pass-through network without custom DNS/Adguard/VPNs/DoH etc etc, with as sole purpose to just allow me to get to the captive portal. The others have their purposes (VPNs, AdGuard, etc etc).
I rarely see those 8x8 setups. They exists, but those are high density enterprise access points, which I honestly do not see in most households. 4x4 I do see. Client devices with wifi 4 streams actually also pretty rare.
Or do you mean multiple 4x4 radios in the (2.4GHz/)5GHz(/6GHz) band? That’s also doable in the consumer world.
In home networks I probably would go for multiple APs instead of 1 big device. Especially when the house is also filled with smart (but slow) gadgets that suck up massive amounts of air-time.
Pretty much nonexistent. A 4x4 router is only useful with multiple clients.
Of course, I mean 8x8, not dual chain 4x4: you can use the same 4 antennae for those radios. Still not useful on a travel router if you have just a few devices.
That’s the smart thing to do but not a very common one. It also means you can avoid spending big money on 8x8 APs and just use multiple 4x4s.
Not really a fair comparison from a feature to feature perspective, though the Slate to Opal does show how much a Dual Band unit has increased in size albeit with higher specs. True comparion is Mango/Shadow v TP-Link. They are both slightly bigger but give additional functionality, primarily for me around OpenWRT and functionality rather than the physical additional ethernet port and USB port.
My ideal for my use cases, a dual band repeater (could even do without ethernet and USB) the size of Mango or Shadow or even better, size of the USB 150. Really high specs not important (sames specs as AR750/S)
Currently AR750 or AR750s is still my go to overseas travel router for its combination of size, weight, power requirements and specifications.
Oh and worth noting that the AR750 Creta is actually based on the same chipset as the Shadow.
I’m looking at other solutions to replace my current GL iNet travel routers, as I really do not want to carry anything bigger than an AR750S, and GL iNet seems to be going in a different direction.
The specification on the new NanoPi R2S Plus from Friendly Elec that is not much bigger than a Shadow, has 1GB RAM, 32GB eMMC, USB C power, and optional m.2 WIFI card, shows it is still possible to build a small, well-equipped router. Its not perfect, but it is much closer to what I need.
DNS rebinding might not work, or your captive portal might require bypassing the VPN rules. And you might be best off using the DHCP provided DNS servers instead of something else (like DoH?). I honestly rarely have trouble with captive portals on my travelrouter config, but I also have multiple LAN networks in there. One which is the plain and simple pass-through network without custom DNS/Adguard/VPNs/DoH etc etc, with as sole purpose to just allow me to get to the captive portal. The others have their purposes (VPNs, AdGuard, etc etc).
!
