penner42

I haven't, but I don't think the wifi on the RPi3 is terribly good. How much do you want to push through it? I've used my GL-AR300M routing through my home network and watched Netflix and HBO Now just fine with it.

unmesh

IIRC, MT7620A just has a different feature set than MT7620N. I also see there is a model GL-MT300N-V2 router using the MT7628N SoC whose datasheet shows that it has an AES engine which should give better VPN performance for some crypto settings

paranoiatx

The Edimax 6258NL goes in and out of stock. Since mine was dying after 3 years I put in an order despite it being out of stock and it shipped a week later. Link.

I realize there are newer options out there, but this little guy has been absolutely invaluable.

freecia

GL-AR750 gli.net 802.11ac travel router is up for pre-order! Shipping is estimated at the end of this month.
https://www.gl-inet.com/ar750/#
https://www.gl-inet.com/forums/topic...750-pre-order/
Specs:
It also looks to have 2!! LAN + 1 WAN port. "Ethernet is 10/100 Mbps. Want Gigabit and same size router? Maybe you need to wait until next year. We do have plan for this."

I pre-ordered for $45 + $9 DHL Global shipping since inventory can come and go (GL-USB150 microrouter is OOS via Amazon fulfillment)

External antenna version, Gigabit Eth, & Amazon ordering are planned. Might be worth another purchase if/when that comes out. Hope that version will be USB-C and I'd be interested in a mini refresh if it is within $10 price bump.

penner42

This looks like it's quite a bit bigger than the GL-AR300M. Heavier, too. 105*72*27mm, 66g vs. 58*58*25mm, 39g. For travel, I'll stick with the smaller one. But this looks nice. USB-C would be great, as I just got a Galaxy S8 and already have a tablet with USB-C. I still have a Kindle and Roku Stick I travel with, though, so I can't ditch the micro-usb yet, anyway.

scubadu

I'm still occasionally using the ASUS WL-330NUL, which historically has been adequate for my needs.

However, in the last couple of trips, when staying at large branded hotels I've come across something "interesting." When I attempt to use the 330NUL to connect to the hotels SSID the router simply does not see the SSID. I can try refreshing, rebooting, etc. but it simply will never show me the hotels guest SSID as one of the selections (it shows several other, secured SSIDs). However, if I just fire up my notebook, phone, or tablet all of those devices are all able to "see" the hotels guest SSID and connect/authenticate without any problem.

I did a quick Google search, but didn't find much. Has anyone else experienced this issue? Have hotel IT departments somehow figured out how to identify (and block) these type of devices?

Regards

wxman22

I used the ASUS last year while in Japan, it worked great.

nmenaker

could be that either the ASUS isn't seeing any 802.11b/g signals anymore as they may not be shown by the AP. could be a setting on the ASUS or the AP at the location to either not see b/g or see only b/g and not N.. hard to say. could be that the signal at the AP was only a 5ghz signal and the ASUS only sees 2.4ghz signals. I doubt a local hotel or shop is blocking certain MAC addresses that this device would have.

legalalien

I don't have the same router, but I occasionally experience the same phenomenon with my HooToo TM03 in congested environments. In most cases, changing Wi-Fi settings to use a specific channel (e.g., 1, 6, or 11) for the internal network instead of the default "Auto", fixes the problem. My understanding is that the router cannot see or connect to a Wi-Fi network on the same channel that it uses to broadcast the internal network. If the hotel happens to use the same channel as the one the router has auto-picked to broadcast on, the router won't see hotel's network.

Maybe I'm smoking something though...not a networking expert by any means.

Wise-Broccoli8301

No I suspect this is a bug. I've seen this a few times and it has nothing to do with 802.11b/g signals. For instance on my flight yesterday EWR-SFO I could not get my router to see the United WiFi network (802.11n). I had to reboot it twice and then suddenly it started seeing networks. This device overall is very finnicky. Sometimes it works great, other times it just flat out fails.

onobond

How many devices do you guys hook up to WiFi when staying in a hotel?

Most of the places I stay in allow 5 devices, personally I see no need for schlepping yet another device as a router.

This thread was started more than 5 years ago - is there still need for routers?

legalalien

Yes, cost is no longer a consideration in many cases, though it still is in others.

However, I find having to configure yet another network and having to login (every day, or more often) on 5 devices to be sufficiently inconvenient to warrant a router. All my devices, and - more importantly - family devices connect to my router automatically.

My TM03 also serves as a media hub for all devices, so all kids iPads have access to the same set of movies.

quick_dry

I only have to setup the network once, do the hotel network portal login screen once, and all the devices already have the connection info.

It gives it a consistent network for auto-discovery e.g. streaming a movie from the laptop to the Apple TV or something like that.

I just find it a lot easier, and some hotel wireless networks keep every device isolated from each other - which sucks when you want them to talk to each other, other hotels don't isolate the devices... which sucks when you don't want your things exposed to everyone else in the hotel. This just makes it easy to use them as if I was at home.

AroundAndAbout

Check with a Wfi analyzer which channels the unseen SSIDs are on. It is possible the channels are in the non-USA range, that is 12,13,14. It is very uncommon to have SSIDs in that range though.
My ASUS router cannot see those channels & I can't set the region to open up full channel selection. I had set my previous router in this range & found other equipment couldn't see those. It is an occasional equipment problem, in my case exacerbated by ASUS not allowing setting this on the router. I'm not sure is a problem on all ASUS routers. For more info you'll have to search 'list of WLAN channels' as I'm too new to post a URL!

gfunkdave

What is the consensus these days on the best little router? Important things to me are the ability to route all traffic through a VPN (IPSec or OpenVPN) and that I can configure the router via wireless even if it doesn't have a wireless connection. I had a Hootoo Tripmate that I installed OpenWRT on, and if I took it to a new hotel, say, I'd have to connect to it via ethernet to configure it because if it couldn't connect to its most recent wireless WAN it would refuse to broadcast its wireless LAN network as well.