GL-AR300M16-Ext Portable Mini Travel Wireless Pocket Router - WiFi Router | OpenWrt | 2 x Ethernet Ports | OpenVPN/Wireguard VPN for Public & Hotel Wi-Fi | USB 2.0 Port | 2 x External Antennas

Impressively tiny & lightweight (approx the size of a Samsung Flip cell p but less than 1/2 the weight! 3 in 1 eouter. Acts as a cabled WAN/LAN Router/Repeater & Wi-Fi router/extender + 2.4/5ghz capable & has16MB built-in RAM & it's infinitely re-flashable & imitates whatever name brand router you need it to (as long as you have the software). NOT your typical "Made in China cheap POJ" no name router! Was definitely impressed that it even came with a 3ft flat CAT6 cable in the package for setup or cables use. Simple basic setup & dashboard + does both 2.4/5ghz bands (you may need a 5ghz capable antenna if you don't have 1. I got an extra under$10 extended range 1). Stock, it still has impressive range. Entire package is far under 1/2 a #! Saves me from carrying an extra heavy router in my car. It's absolutely portable & powers off any PBank even for range testing. Definitely buy it again.

> GL.iNet GL-AR300M16-Ext Portable Mini Travel Wireless Pocket Router (~$30 on sale) The Good: + Fully configurable. Runs OpenWRT and speed and reliability. + Comes with reasonable defaults. Allows bridge mode and can use wifi as the WAN uplink. + Built well. + Really good value. The Bad: - Wifi RF power isn't terribly powerful. The bang:buck on this is jaw-dropping. I think most GL.iNet stuff has a great value, but this palm-sized router packs a punch for dealing with small, mobile networks on the fly.

First item had a stripped antenna. Second took a week to get but arrived perfect. It is up and running as expected. I assume just luck of the draw i had a bad antenna. Packaged nice, and a great small form factor.

I was hesitant because of some of the reviews about these acting up, but it had all the features I wanted so I gave it a try anyway. After a couple weeks I've had an overall very good experience with it. There are a couple minor shortcomings but it does exactly what I wanted, and the range is equal or better than the older TP-Link I was using that had larger antennas. I wanted this for work so I could have a small private network with a WISP repeater. Before I was using an old router for local but no net access, and it was a bit of a hassle when I needed to go online. Pros: Stable connection Good range Tiny Many functions Easy to set up. Your mileage may vary depending on what you're trying to do and how familiar you are with this sort of thing already. Cons: Occasionally disconnects from the WiFi that I've connected it to for internet - I think this is due to the lease expiring and it getting confused by the multiple repeaters for that network, but I'm not sure. It's only every few days and I just have to go back into the options and reconnect it. Network (local) speeds aren't very impressive, but on par with the other N300 router I was using for local access with the same devices. About 3-6mb/s transfer speed. May be the devices I'm using. Internet speeds using WISP mode are slowed a bit, but that's expected in this mode and it's still very usable for me. It could be better in a couple areas, but for the price and form factor I'm 100% happy with its performance and may be looking into other options from this company in the future.

This little router is pretty cool. I purchased it to give WiFi to my VoIP telephone device (Ooma Telo- it doesn't come with WiFi, only ethernet). I set it up basically as a WiFi extender, connected via WiFi to my home network, and plugged the Ooma into the LAN port. It works like a charm and was easy to setup with the included instructions. The Ooma wi-fi adapter is $50 ($20 more) and would only be good for that one use. I can always repurpose this pocket router in the future if I want. I also think this would be really handy to expand your WiFi network for smart devices that don't need a whole lot of bandwidth. I'm not sure if it would be ideal for WiFi cameras based on the bandwidth I'm getting, but it would probably work well enough. It's cool that it can be used in different configurations, from an extender, to a WAP, to an independent router tethered to your phone or hotspot. That's cool. It also has built-in VPN capabilities, which would be especially handy while traveling. A lot of features in such a small package at a great price. The shortfall I think is going to be that you're limited in data transfer speeds and only one WAN and LAN port. It only uses WiFi on 2.4ghz bands, so slower than the 5ghz networks. In WiFi extender mode, with my laptop hard wired on the LAN port, my download speeds were somewhere around 30 Mbps (and I usually get well over 300 Mbps on my home network). I would think it probably gets better transfer speeds as a WAP (connected to the internet via ethernet vice WiFi), but I haven't tried that out. BUT, it's plenty fast enough for VOIP phone calls and basic office work use, which is what I need. Overall, I'm impressed.

I was in the market for a device to act as a wifi bridge between an adhoc wifi device and my Win10 laptop. This device had the potential to fulfill that need and prior to purchase, I asked if this was capable. There were three answers to my question, two of them clearly not understanding the question (always fun on the publicly-accessible internet!), but the manufacturer also responded, in the positive. So I made the purchase. I could not get the device to join an adhoc network, no matter what I did. I emailed customer support and received the answer I needed to install a plug-in. I was unable to locate an appropriate plug-in and told this to Support. After a few days, they replied back they made a mistake and there is no plug-in. End of communication. I did my own research and deduced I would have more access to the hardware functionality if I upgraded the firmware to a newer (compatible) version of OpenWrt. I downloaded it and started flashing. After approximately 45 minutes there was no visible progress so I killed the web page and restarted the router. I never came fully back up (e.g. no login, wifi SSID not visible). I did the 10-second reset. No difference. I left it unpowered overnight and then did the 10-second reset. No difference. I left it unpowered over another night. Still not functional. It is now a brick and as I no longer have the original packaging, it will shortly join a pile of electronics destined for recycling. Do not buy if you want to do anything more than basic routing, despite the manufacturer's claims.

I am very happy with this because it does exactly what I needed, plus, it's super small and lightweight. I did go for the one with the external antennae that might help with weaker WiFi networks. I needed it to connect to a Hotel/condo network that requires a login screen (often called a "captive" network or "captive login"). Once this is established, it provided my own subnet (with a password I can specify) for just my various equipment of computers, media players, video game stuff. Now they just connect to this local subnet instead of directly into the public hotel network. Some notes: you have to update the firmware. It also says this in a printed note in the package, so no surprise there. You need to use another computer to load a file from their site, and then switch your network to go directly to this little box, then tell it to upgrade from the file you saves (should only take a few minutes, though it took me longer at first to find the right file and how to do it.) Mine came with an older 2.x firmware and there is a newer 3.x version which seems much more friendly to use and has more features and fixes. note 2: to use a "captive login" network, there is a security setting in "Advanced DNS" you have to un-check. This is actually a good feature because it's trying to protect you from sites spoofing another site you think you are getting to -- but that's exactly how hotel networks for you to their login screen (i.e. go to any site and it puts you first onto the hotel login). For security, this is stopped by default. So there's a checkbox you have to change to allow it. There is a good document on their site explaining this. Also I will use this when travelling in an RV for the same reason -- RV parks often have captive logins or limit connections; this allows you to share that among all your equipment. Even when you move from one park to the next, your equipment still knows how to connect to this unit -- you just need to log in to it from a computer to set it up for the new location and then all your equipment will be happy. So anyway some advanced skills needed, but if you are messing with networking that's kind-of unavoidable. A great product at a reasonable price. Note that this one does not do the AC (5GHz) network.

I'm a BAS technician and this little router is very handy; have had it for a few months now, it works for light weight tasks, but when i've loaded it, say RDP over wifi with heavy file transfers, I ran into it over heating and turning off after 15 minutes or so. Then when i've tried wifi and lan with wan port, rdp, other tcp connections, two laptops connected to it at the same time, it didn't last more than a few minutes before it would cycle power. It does lightweight things and good for the price but not heavy traffic.