photoagent101

I just saw this deal:
Walmart offers the T-Mobile 4G Mobile Hotspot, model no. 610214637031, for $29.99. (Kmart has it for the same with free in-store pickup.) Choose in-store pickup to dodge the $4.97 shipping fee. That's the lowest price we could find by $20. It shares T-Mobile's network with up to eight devices.

Huntress

I have been using the HooToo TripMate Nano - Model TM-02 for the last couple of years in approximately 15 hotels each year with absolutely no issue. Last month I came across a problem with the TripMate unable to pick-up the WiFi connection at some hotels. The hotel WiFI connection would appear on my iPad but it wouldn't show on the TripMate. Out of 6 hotels, TripMate couldn't find 3 WiFi connections. I checked for firmware updates (none). None of the hotels had Ethernet connections. I contacted TripMate tech support who informed me that "those hotels probably use 5 ghz and TripMate can only use 2 ghz bands".

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue? I am not at all "tech-savvy" and just want a secure WiFi connection while traveling.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

nkedel

I'd be really surprised if any hotel were only using 5ghz at this point; there are a LOT of older devices out there which can't see it.

docbert

I would say there's exactly a zero chance that any hotel is only using 5Ghz.

More likely the signal is weak enough that the TripMate can't detect/connect to it - these routers usually have much smaller antenna that a laptop, and smaller than a phone/etc.

I've had exactly the same issue with my TP-Link in some hotels - sometimes it can see the signal but not connect, sometimes it can't even see it.

Huntress

Nkedel and docbert - thanks so much for your insight. I was ready to toss my TripMate Nano, until I read your posts.
Thank You.

nchinetti

Is your TripMate configured for North America/Taiwan? Are the hotels where you couldn't see the wifi, located in Asia/Europe? If so, they maybe using channel 12-13 (or 12-14 in Japan), which is not available to wifi devices configured for North America/Taiwan (where only channels 1-11 are used). Or it could just be a case of wifi signal too weak for TripMate as docbert stated.

Huntress

All of my TripMate usage was in the US.

mikelat

Does anyone have experience/recommendations for an 802.11ac capable travel router? Finding that I can get much higher speeds using laptop direct to hotel wifi than I can with my HooToo Titan and thinking I may upgrade to the D-Link DIR-510L.

gfunkdave

You're still limited to the internet bandwidth the hotel gives you.

AC only would matter if you wanted to copy files between devices you connect to the router.

tmiw

To be fair, AC also implies 5GHz, which tends to be less crowded than 2.4GHz. (You can do 5GHz with N as well but almost none of the travel routers seemed to support it last I looked.)

docbert

The problem is that most travel routers contain a single radio, which they share between the "internet" side of the connection and your private network - which means you can end up with significantly lower bandwidth, especially if the wifi speed has dropped below the maximum due to a weak signal. It also means they end up using one channel for both sides, which can also cause interference.

In addition to my travel router I've started travelling with a separate wifi client (a Netgear WNCE2001 I picked up at Walmart on clearance for $8). I use that device to connect to the hotel wifi, and then my normal travel router connects to that via ethernet (just as if the room had ethernet) - and the performance difference can be significant.

Having two radios will have the same impact. If one of those happened to be 2.4Ghz (connecting to the hotel) and the other 5Ghz (to your laptop) then you'd get the same benefit as above, only with less contention on the 2nd hop.

unmesh

The Xiaomi Mi WiFi Mini is a small AC1200 router for about $25 though a little large to be a true travel router and it needs a 12V power supply. Also, the OEM firmware is in Chinese and you have to do some hacking to load English firmware.

I've flashed a Nexx WT3020 N300 USB powered router (approx $15) with OpenWRT and added a $3 N150 USB dongle to create a solution with 2 2.4GHz radios. I'm holding off buying a dual-band 802.11n USB dongle to get a 5GHz radio in the hope that support for the similarly priced 802.11ac dongle will be added soon. Also, the latter are physically smaller.

Either way, I expect to have a dual-band dual-radio USB powered travel router in my kit soon.

mikelat

True, but with a single radio router connecting to wifi and acting as a hotspot you end up with about 1/2 the bandwidth. In the last hotel I had speedtest ratings of 8-9 with direct hotel wifi and only 3.5 using the hootoo. The room does not have a hardwired connection option.

legalalien

Don't. In my experience DIR-510L is a crappy router. Its UI exposes very little in terms of troubleshooting or advanced configuration, and frequently goes down after 30-40 minutes of operation. And performance...I don't notice it being any faster than 802.11n HooToo, perhaps because hotel Internet is typically slow anyway.

It's been collecting dust in my drawer for the last year or two, as I've been using HooToo and Edimax.

tmiw

I just bought a TL-MR3040 (which may have been a bad decision) and noticed that it seems to reject my iPhone 6S fairly often. When that happens, the iPhone repeatedly pops up the password prompt when trying to connect to the MR3040's SSID despite entering the password correctly. "Forgetting" the network and power-cycling seems to make it work...once. Other devices like my MacBook Pro can consistently connect without issues, however.

Anyway, I'm wondering if it's worth it to try to flash OpenWRT on it to make iPhone connectivity more reliable or if I should just return it to the store. Thoughts?