GL-AR300M16 Portable Mini Travel Wireless Pocket Router - WiFi Router/Access Point/Extender/WDS | OpenWrt | 2 x Ethernet Ports | OpenVPN/Wireguard VPN | USB 2.0 Port

My only reason for purchasing this router is for use on cruise ships. I cruise a lot with my wife and mostly cruise with Royal Caribbean. Just got off a cruise on Allure of the Seas and the device worked great. Was able to connect to ships Wi-Fi and connect both our phones to the internet, saves on purchasing 2 or more internet accounts. Using my iPhone connected to the router first and selecting the ships WiFi, the Captive portal launched automatically and was able to enter my Royal Caribbean username and PIN number successfully. Then I connect phones/etc to the routers name. I power it using a small 5000 mah battery backup and conceal both devices in my shorts pocket and stay connected throughout the ship all day long on a single charge. Great device for cruise ships, just buy! Update 10/01/24: Works on Carnival ships also! Just got off Carnival Dream cruise ship. Worked like a charm, same as on Royal. Was able to connect to ships Wi-Fi and then launched login screen by going to carnivalwifi.com. On login screen was able to enter folio number and birthdate.

I recently started a remote job that required a hardwired Ethernet connection, and this travel router has completely changed the game for me—it gave me back my freedom! I have it set up to automatically connect to my home network when I’m at home and to my mobile hotspot when I’m on the go. All I have to do is turn on my hotspot, and I’m good to go. It’s compact, well-built, and super easy to set up. I love that it’s USB-powered—no extra power adapter needed. It plugs right into my laptop, so as long as my laptop is powered on, the router is too. For convenience, I’ve velcroed it to the top of my laptop to keep it secure and avoid dangling wires. Overall, this is the perfect portable router!

Good little unit, especially for the price. With OpenWRT it has extraordinary features and flexibility, while pulling down just under 1W on average, so my typical "10,000mAh" battery pack could run it all day. Various small things could be slightly better. It should use USB C power - who uses micro-USB these days? Also, as a travel router it should have some sort of cable management for packaging the cables you need. It weighs almost nothing because inside is mostly air that could instead be cable storage/management. They should recess the sockets so cables can stay attached, perhaps with guides to wind the cables around the unit when it's packed. Of course 5GHz ac and a USB 3 port would be awesome (a mini-Beryl), but for $30 it's hard to find something significant to complain about.

Awesome device. I wrote a horrible review early in this process. I'm redoing that... USB tethering worked great. My provider theories me to 5mb but I'm looking for stable internet for devices, not speed. I can use my phone itself for large for transfers. Huge note: your phone is the internet using this device. It provides a network but you're phone ISN'T ACTUALLY ON THAT NETWORK! Beware media casters. Frustration will Mount I promise. Onto wireless tethering through my phone hotspot. This works great BUT... For devices connecting through this device is great but for devices communicating within the network speeds are ridiculously slow. What I think is happening is if you're serving media, for instance, all of the traffic has to come back through the router to the phone itself, then get routed and then back through this device. Device. It's truly unusable for device to device connectivity when using your phone's hotspot to connect to this device. But otherwise it works great and that's possibly the best way to use the device that I found. To get around this device to device limitation, I'm actually using the repeater mode to pass through my phones hotspot or to USB tether to the device. Then I use the ethernet port to provide internet to an actual full-size router that I have here in the house. All of my devices connect to that and internal communication is at that maximum speed. But external communication is then through this device and everything works perfectly. I would take this to a hotel and a heartbeat or a cruise ship but you have to keep in mind the device to device is going to cripple you. This device to device issue does not exist. If you're using router mode or USB tethering because in that instance the device handles communication between devices and only internet traffic itself comes back through your phone. Overall I love the device. I got rid of cable and my house is not online at all but all of my devices are stable and when I walk in the door I turn on my mobile hotspot. This device automatically scanned recognizes that it's there, connects to it and then passes traffic through it until I leave the house again. I don't have enough speed to serve media online, but I can I can watch video and surf the web and all of my devices are connected to the internet when my phone's in the house. It's a great device that I initially gave a horrible review to. My horrible review was the media server speed in repeater mode. Use USB. It saves your phone battery and you don't run into this nonsense of device to device. But in all instances your phone providing the internet is not on the resulting network. So you create a network and connect all your internal devices to it and then go on your phone which is the source of the internet. Start a video and try to cast it to one of your devices and those devices aren't there because your phone is on a different network.

My wife was getting bombarded by 5G when she wsas getting ready to go to bed and having sleep issues. She started turning the Verizon modem off at night and cutting my Wifi connection . I needed an alternative so I could continue using the internet at night. Did my research and decided this would be the best solution to remedy those issues and the price was extrenely affordable to check out, even if it didn't work out as planned . I hooked it up last night. The input and output of the MINI was similar if not more than what the whole house modem we had been putting out. It's almost a plug and play installation with some minor tweaks which I took upon myself to make. Summary: The Mini could be used as a temporary modem when no Wifi goes down. I'll use it backyard and when travelling on vacations and as an emergency back up if the internet provider goes down and you have no wifi connection to the modem. But only have access to your cell phone. To top it off the MINI has OPN VPN included. The durability which I can't vouche for at this time, since I've only had it for a day. I would proabaly put it in once place and leave it to extend it lifespan. Finally, I checked to see how hot it was going to get when in use. The report I can give is: barely warm unlike my whole house modem unit. LOL DYOR🤔

I wanted to use this to create a VPN tunnel between two of these devices using the wireguard function. I have two serial to Ethernet devices which communicate on a local LAN but I need to have that communications over the Internet. This device should have been able to do this. I was able to setup the server device and added a client but when I tried to create the configuration file for the client it errored out every time. I spent a couple days farting around with this thing but couldn’t get this part to work. I even tried to SSH into it but there was no file created. I tried to create one from scratch but that failed too. Too many trips down the rabbit hole on this one, I sent the devices back and gave up in frustration. I’m going to try this with the more expensive GL.iNet GL-MT3000 (Beryl AX) next and see if it works any better for me. It’s supposed to have a better UI with more memory to support that. Fingers crossed.

It is difficult to give this product a high recommendation. I purchased this to replace a TP Link A300 that had been working then gave up the ghost after two months (decided to try a different manufacturer due to that) Set up can be a bear. Here's why: For some reason the manufacturers of these wisp based travel routers can not provide clear/complete information, user documentation. For example, they will tell you to start up the router, then connect to the admin page through wireless. That failed in my instance. The documentation tells you to use the pw "goodlife". Nope, doesnt work. THEN WHAT!!?? (see below about support) No explanation of that. Ahhh..... wait!! This router has a LAN port as well as WAN (not all others do), so you can try to connect hard wired. (I suggest you turn off wi fi on your computer when you do. I didnt originally, that can create some issues. ) Nope, that did not work . THEN WHAT!! (the answer wasI had my computer network set to manual 1000, not automatic. Neeeded to change that to 100 or automatic) I was not challenged for a PW accessing through the hard wire LAN the first time once I (not support) figured out the speed issue. . (AFTER the first time, after I set an admin password, I was) So it seems on first use there is no admin password. I still have not found a use for "goodlife" password. lol It would be useful to explain that to emphasize the need to set one. And to provide an option if connecting wirelessly fails as it did for me. They tell you to set your admin password. What they fail to tell you is that there is also a wifi password which you should set. You can then enable "repeater", which then allows a Wisp option (actually they just call it repeater settings no Wisp on there anywhere) . So there is no reference to Wisp on the router admin page to choose your wireless set up (this is a travel router, hotel and even other public networks are the essential use of the router, and in WISP mode. Why not make that clear on the interface?) What they fail to tell you (clearly) is that if you are using this as WISP on a network that has a captive portal, you may need to disable a dns setting (that would normally prevent duplication). The need for that depends, of course on details of the wan wireless network. If you are using a device like a streaming device, that does not allow a web page to come up, you will need to try to access the internet through your computer first, so you can verify the router on the portal page. Once you have enabled the router on your WAN wifi (for example the hotel). If you are connected through the hard wire lan, you can use your computer to access the internet to confirm connection. HOWEVER, depending on your computer (I assume?) you will not be able to access the router through wifi with your computer (to confirm) while your computer is still connected hard wired to the LAN. You can use Other devices through their wifi while your computer is hard wire through the Lan. However your computer is connected to the router, once you've established all the above, you can then access the router (and so the internet) with your other devices with wifi (yes I am repeating myself, I am not writing user documentation if you/they want perfect send me a check lmao lol) . An Apple TV, or other streaming device, for example, will not need to "see" or act on the portal splash page. The portal will think your device is the router. Lastly, my unit shipped without the most recent firmware version. (got to that later, see below) Another worthwhile note. If you've been using your computer on a gig network, you may have set you network speed to gig, not to automatic (as I did). Tonote again since this is what originaly caused me to call support: The router is 100 not 1000 network speed. If your computer is set to 1000 they wont talk to each other. Automatic for network speed might work. FURTHER!!! Your wifi WAN (say, hotel) network will be using only a few available channels. The router does not appear to automatically scan all channels successfully to find the ones being use and connect to the strongest one. EVEN though if you poke around to find the channels to be use by the router, there is an "automatic" choice . So you need to go to Channel options as the router admin and check each channel and make note of which one is strongest. There are a few other issues with set up, that involved just trying what looked like different options that might logically be at issue. Those I would consider "to be expected" Re support. My experience was this. I went to their web site (fortunately I was able to access the internet without their router lol). And entered a support ticket. That is a little confusing, since you can "contact us" on a form mid screen. AND there is also a chat window on the side. I did both. The mid screen form requires you to open an account with them. The chat window says they will respond to you in a short time. (I dont recall using a facebook log in, in either of those requests.... I "might" have out of frustration.... that will be interesting in a second). While waiting I was doing some things on facebook. After about an hour, a chat request popped up on FB. From GL. Remember above, I do not recall using an FB link or id to send either support request? I avoid those for security reasons (some might think security being relative with FB of course). At that point who cares, though, right? I had a support person to talk to! Maybe i broke my own rule but it worked!! (just goes to show ,try to remember what you did when you have multiple options you are pursuing lol) He was in Hong Kong. His english was good. He walked me through several of the issues I referenced above. He was technically oriented in his approach so there were some, as would be expected, small misfires. However, if that happened a question from me and he (I assume he?) resolved that. For example, "please send a screen shot". hmm "A screen shot of what !!!" the context of what we had just spoken did not indicate what to screen shot ) Another tidbit: The documentation says to use the password "goodlife" to access the router. At that point I still had not gotten access to the router, we were trying to do so through wi fi, and the support rep said goodlife was not a password for this. (I did not try to clarify why if its in the start up documentation, at that point who cares) The support rep helped me through the various issues. Some of which (once I got in to the router as admin) were "seeing" the choice he was referencing on the page. Nothing was said about the captive portal dns setting change during all that, btw. While initially trying to access the router through the hard wire lan, it kept failing. The rep had no solution. As he was thinking about that I was poking around. It occurred to me.... the router is 2.4, you need to make sure your wifi WAN is 2.4. What about network speed? The router is 100.... hmmmm so I checked my computer network settings and I had network speed set to 1000. Changed that to 100, success. I figured that out on my own, the rep didnt point to it. Once connected to the router he pointed out to set the password. Didnt mention the network password (or not yet) but I noticed that option. He noticed that I was using version 2.x of their firmware. Suggested I upgrade and sent a link. (All during the support process he would provide directly links to different technical pages. ) He then asked if I would like to try their beta firmware versionit had a different UI. I did finally install that. You can download the upgrade through the link (and from their support area if you poke around). However how to install it on the router?? Ahhhhhh the last choice on the main admin panel says "Hardware" (or something similar). And when you chose that, can then see options to upgrade firmware! When all was said and done I still could not connect to the router with wifi with my computer (my computer was still connected hard wire). Never was while working with the rep. I also had not tried to access the internet through the hard wire connection. That was never mentioned to see if the router was connecting to the wifi Wan. To do that you need to poke around in the wireless admin section and you will find choices for clients, network , etc, and in there if your router has "seen" the wifi wan client you will see an option to "join". That will also take you through the captive portal splash page (depending of course on the dns duplication issue if you run in to that you need to go change that setting). And depending, I believe on whether you have your computer talking to the WAN through wifi directly (as I did). See the issues? There is no "tree" of things to check, options to review, depending on the situation. The rep, while helpful and pretty nice guy, also did not have such a tree to follow. Cant connect through lan. Check cables, Check computer network speeds. Can connect through LAN but not through wireless? Try disconnecting LAN before trying wireless. Passwords.... set BOTH Admin, AND network. Captive portal page does not come up, change DNS duplication protection to off. Those types of things are basics that "should" be in the user documentation. The rep would want to go to deeper detail right away (see if the router shows ip addresses for the WAN) but did not to the simpler basics. (reminds you of the joke among support reps.... user says "my computer screen is black." Rep spends an hour going through all kinds of detail. Then a big pause. Then from the rep "is your computer plugged in" That's funny to support reps because they have all done that in one form or another. Comparison to TP Lin A 300 Using the same computer. Using the same hotel based wifi WAN. I did not need to go to support to get it working. I DID still have to poke around a little, try a few different things. But it set up much more easily that first time. On the other hand, my TP Link a 300 just sits there now, two months later, "blinking". Complete reset doesnt help. Cant connect directly through a Lan port on the router, there isnt one. Tried using the WAN port just in case. No joy. it's effectively a really bad paperweight since it is so light. There are options/choices in the GL admin UI that just do not exist on the TP. But then I did not need to change those with the TP, I did with the GL. You can get in to installing different software/firmware to actually run the GL. Which gives you lots more things to play with (if you are so inclined or understand). Not so with the TP. No idea how the GL will hold up with constant use compared to the TP at this point. The GL seems to be better contructed physically. For example, the power plug on the TP sits a littletoo far back and is not solidly attached, so plugging in takes a little wiggling. Pretty sure thats a point of failure over time (cant "know" that since the TP is now just a blinking light not a router) The GL, that plug is set well and is "solid".

So figuring out how to set this up and how to make it work was not the easiest thing I have ever done. Let me say, I am not a tech guy, but I have, over the course of my years working in small offices where we had no tech person, done more than my share of setting things up. That said, it's not a daily routine and I don't have "muscle memory" for it. That means each time I have to do some sort of home or office set up, it takes me a little figuring out how to make it work exactly as I want it to. I almost always succeed and my family requires me to do most of this work, so I'm good at it, just not immersed in it. What I struggled with was how to enter DEVICE credentials versus INTERNET credentials I also had to use the same network name as I use at home to make this do what I wanted to, so that also took a minute. Also figuring out which "mode" it needed to be in was not self explanatory. On my first try, I think it took me about 30 minutes (after initial home setup) to get it logged in to the hotel network. So what does this DO for you? I can't speak to what its full capabilities are, but here is how I use it. 1) Some hotels (the higher end ones) charge a daily fee for internet and limit the number of devices you can use. I use this to connect to the hotel/rental wifi. Because it's a single device, there is only one IP number connected to their network. Then I share the signal with my other devices (phone, laptop, tablet, etc.). All now have access to the hotel wifi for the cost of one device. 2) When traveling, I find it tedious to connect every device to wifi -- particularly when my wife and I are working and need our work devices in addition to my personal ones. This applies to connecting to family members' networks, to vacation rentals, etc. Because I name this wifi the same as my home network, all my family's devices instantly recognize it (even my work devices because I have a hybrid remote job). This solves the problem. Get this one device logged in and set up and voila! -- internet for every device. 3) Smart devices like Alexa devices, or the other brand if you use it, sometimes make a trip better. I love being able to ask about the weather, to listen to Sirius XM news channels and to unwind to my favorite playlist. I don't have to set them up at all. I just connect them to my home network one time and, since this broadcasts the same network name, I have music and more with the sound of my voice. I took it to a friends' beach house and my wife was amazed that she was "just connected." I told her I brought Old Trusty and had set it up and she said, "Oh!" and looked at me like I was using some strange voodoo. My grown daughter who lives in another city met us at a vacation cabin that had wifi. She looked on the fridge for the wifi credentials, went to her computer to log in and wondered how she had internet and why my home network was being broadcast. I told her since she had visited my house and connected to my network, her devices instantly recognized my travel router. I find connecting this item to the travel network ONE TIME and getting instant access on my work and home laptops, my work and home cell phone, my wife and daughters' devices makes it worth the three minutes it takes to set it up at a rental house. So that's how it works for me. Like I said, I had to "figure it out" just because my tech skills don't get a daily workout like they once did, but if you have a little patience, understand the concept of what you're doing and read a tutorial and follow the directions, you're good to go. Really a small, portable, powerful little bit of home convenience on the road.