15 ms·

Unifi Travel Router

472 points by flurdy 9mo ago

wateralien 9mo ago
I never travel without my GL-AXT1800. Saved me so many times: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-axt1800/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-axt1800/ I’m actually on it right now.
- matt-attack 9mo ago
  What’s the use case exactly?
  - tstrimple 9mo ago
    One is actually usable wifi at hotels with ethernet cables available. I don't use that device, but a DIY version that also acts as a portable media server while traveling. We can tunnel back to our home network, but often stay places with very bad reception and or internet access. Also helps keep the kids entertained on longer road trips. They can connect their devices to the router as we travel and have full access to the cached media.
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    I have this. TP-Link AC750 https://a.co/d/esxrRA4 https://a.co/d/esxrRA4 When you are some place with a captive network and want to use devices that don’t have a browser. You connect the router to the WiFi network that has internet access and you connect the other WiFi network to a device with a browser like your phone. Every device looks like one device to the captive network and you can use them all. Second use case, I now live in a place with a shared internet access that is shared between all of the units. Anyone can broadcast to and control our Roku device and there is no way to block it from the Roku. We create a private network with the router
- kstrauser 9mo ago
  Heartily seconded! A friend recommended I get one and now I push all my other technical friends to buy one, too. My wife and I traveled a bit this year and it was great having all our gadgets connecting to a single AP under our control. It’s easily paid for itself by avoiding ludicrous per-device daily charges.
  - windexh8er 9mo ago
    I think most travel APs can generally do this, but the feature that makes GL.iNet products popular is: extensibility. I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand for manufacturers, but making products useful via extensibility is a sure fire way to open your target market directly up to prosumers. And those are the buyers that will find you. I own two of their products, one of them I bought in 2019 and can still run what I need to on it.
    - WhyNotHugo 9mo ago
      Readers of HN will value flexibility and extensibility, but the other 99% of the folks there are fine with totally locked-down devices because it’s the only thing they know of. The lack of extensibility likely doesn’t affect sales/profit in any significant proportion.
    - xgbi 9mo ago
      My wife’s work WiFi is handled by a gl.inet 150 (https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar150/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar150/) which is tucked behind her desk since at least 2019. Vanilla openwrt on it, provides WiFi from an Ethernet slot in the wall. Uptime is in years, it’s invisible and chugs along without visible power draw. All her devices connect to it, including her Cisco voip phone. It autossh to my ovh server with remote port forward for remote admin. Cost me 15€ in 2016.
      - TeMPOraL 9mo ago
        >> I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand for manufacturers > My wife’s work WiFi is handled by a gl.inet 150 (...) since at least 2019. All her devices connect to it (...) Cost me 15€ in 2016. I think this answers GP's question as (yet another) solid reason why manufacturers "can't understand" prosumer needs - it's because targeting prosumers, or generally making products that "just works", is very bad for sales down the line.
        qilo 9mo ago
- theoreticalmal 9mo ago
  What is the benefit of this over, for example, an iPhone hotspot?
  - WillPostForFood 9mo ago
    An iPhone can't bridge a wifi network. So you need something like a travel router to share a wifi connection.
    - rtkwe 9mo ago
      They're suggesting just running off your data plan which works for domestic travel (at least to urban areas with good cell service) and can work for international if you go through getting a data eSim.
  - trelane 9mo ago
    You can control it from the ground up, including installing alternate firmware. You can also use VPNs etc.
  - neither_color 9mo ago
    Run one wireguard server in your home and one client instance on this router and now all of your devices can share the same residential VPN connection. No fraud blocks or extra verifications from your banking apps, no million suspicious login detected from all your social accounts, use your home netflix account, etc. All without your individual devices running a VPN app.
    - drnick1 9mo ago
      > Run one wireguard server in your home and one client instance on this router and now all of your devices can share the same residential VPN connection. You don't need a "travel router" for this. My phone is permanently connected to my server via Wireguard (so that I can access my files from anywhere). Adding another device just requires adding a peer in the server's config file and can be accomplished very quickly. It's not clear what problem the travel router solves, unless perhaps you travel with dozens of devices. > no million suspicious login detected from all your social accounts, I can personally do without those.
- kleinsch 9mo ago
  Huge plus one. Useful to bridge hotel wifi so all my devices connect automatically, also useful as an ad-hoc router that fits into my travel pack.
- hnburnsy 9mo ago
  Have you tried hooking it up to an Ethernet port in a hotel room like the one that the TV uses?
  - avidiax 9mo ago
    This rarely works. The TV network is usually access controlled, so you either won't get an IP or you simply won't have internet access. Some hotel rooms (particularly older business hotels) will have an ethernet port for the guest. These work maybe 50% of the time these days. Sometimes you can find a Ruckus AP in your room at outlet level, and these usually have several ethernet ports on the bottom. These also have a working port around 30% of the time. So, TL;DR: various ethernet ports in hotel rooms work less than half the time these days.
    - fastcall 9mo ago
      How’s that access control handled? Very easy to spoof the MAC of the TV or setup some SNI spoofing proxy server, NGFWs with TLS Active Probing are probably harder to deal with but do hotels really have that?
      - SomeUserName432 9mo ago
        > Very easy to spoof the MAC of the TV or setup some SNI spoofing proxy server At that point you're in the 0.1% that the hotel does not really need to worry about. The other >99% will still need to pay for wifi.
        danw1979 9mo ago
        it’s probably >0.1% here …
    - hnburnsy 9mo ago
      I've read the GL.inet can easily clone the TV Mac, pretty cool.
- ei8ths 9mo ago
  these are awesome, i just take my old wifi router tp-link, its big though. I might have to get one of these little guys.
- cosmosgenius 9mo ago
  Is this any better than just doing Hotspot with wifi bridge? I just have my hotspot on my pixel for my devices to connect to. Pixel itself is connected to whatever "public wifi" is there.
  - gruez 9mo ago
    Does that actually work? I don't think you can both have hotspot on and be connected to another network.
    - panarky 9mo ago
      Yes, it has actually worked starting with the Pixel 3. It's called Dual-Band Simultaneous or "STA+AP" (Station + Access Point) concurrency that can bridge an existing wifi connection to an access point to other devices via a hotspot.
    - dorfsmay 9mo ago
      Yes it works. Now you can also tether via USB. Both of them have worked flawlessly for me recently.
    - Doohickey-d 9mo ago
      It seems to be only on certain devices feature(?): on my Pixel it worked, Samsung phone just says "sorry, can't do that".
    - esperent 9mo ago
      Most newer (or at least new + expensive) phones can share their wifi connection via hotspot. 2.4gh only though I think.
      - mi_lk 9mo ago
        Do you know what’s the technical term to search if a phone has that capability? Asking for an iPhone
        9mo ago
- guiambros 9mo ago
  Same! And the best thing is that you can install Tailscale, so you can connect to your tailnet, and exit all traffic through one of your nodes (e.g., your home/office network). It's incredibly useful, with the added bonus that you don't need to install tailscale client in any of your travel devices (phone, tablet, work computer, etc).
  - echelon 9mo ago
    These are neat in that you can jump on and extend existing wifi infra, but it'd be nice if they also included 5G. I want a product that does both. It's cool to have your own network in a hotel. But it'd be nice to be able to do that on the road, away from public wifi, internationally, whenever - which hotspots do. But at the same time, it'd be nice to be able to do the WiFi thing too to cut back on data usage. I frequently blow through my hotspot data. I'd rather this be in one device instead of two. Beggars can't be choosers, though, I suppose?
    - sokoloff 9mo ago
      I’m using a GLinet GL-XE3000 for that and it’s great. Initial setup of the 5G eSIM on a physical SIM took a little searching but it’s been rock solid and having consistent access on the road and hotels has been great for family travel. It has a built-in battery, but I’ve never really tested the duration (I suspect it’s 3-6 hours) as I put it on its AC adapter in the hotel and the n a cigarette lighter adapter in the car, so the battery gets used 15-45 minutes at a time to bridge between those two places. I like it enough that I might buy a second, more compact unit for when space is more a premium, but I’ve been really happy with this one.
      - SergeAx 9mo ago
        What is your usage scenario for this device? It's $400 and 3/4 kg.
        sokoloff 9mo ago
        I bought that specific model to provide connectivity for our robotics team’s pit computers. For this need, good antenna performance is key, since different venues differ wildly in WiFi and cell coverage and when we setup the evening before comps, I want the best chance of getting a solid connection and offering it to the pit LAN. But now that I have it, the device is handy for family travel as well. Put an unlimited data eSIM in the device and everyone has “unlimited” data n the road and when we arrive at a hotel or AirBnB, one person signs it on to wifi and everyone is connected, including tailscale connections to home. If I was doing personal and work travel only, I’d look for a smaller unit, but still with a decent battery.
- password4321 9mo ago
  I could never figure out which gl-inet to get, since some of the newer products seemed less powerful than older ones depending on the product family or something...
  - torginus 9mo ago
    Not sure if you're talking in the context of travel routers, but if you're not, the Flint 2 is always a solid pick.
  - TeMPOraL 9mo ago
    > some of the newer products seemed less powerful than older ones Cynic in me thinks it's because they don't want you to buy one product and be set for a decade, like HN-er here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46373387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46373387. Older products might've been too good.
  - wateralien 9mo ago
    I think the GL-X3000 could be the daddy for power users and any eventuality: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-x3000/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-x3000/
- upcoming-sesame 9mo ago
  How do you handle captive portals in hotels ?
  - mmerickel 9mo ago
    Connect on your phone or other device. Connect to travel router. Clone the mac address of your device. Connect router to wifi. Adjust device to not auto login. Good to go.
    - dalanmiller 9mo ago
      Is this an annoying amount of steps? And do you have to do this on every expiry of your session on the portal?
    - figmert 9mo ago
      GL.iNet routers don't even need this. It has an option to pass through captive portals. So you connect to your GL.iNet AP, then you set it up for the hotel WiFi, tick the option for passing through (it essentially disables VPN, AdGuard Home and other things if enabled), it will then link you to the captive portal where you can log in as you would otherwise. Once the internet is active, the GL.iNet router will then re-enable things like VPN and AdGuard Home. Since these devices are OpenWrt underneath with a pretier ui, I presume this is all possible on any OpenWrt device.
  - jtokoph 9mo ago
    Usually you connect your laptop/phone to the portable router network, which then just pulls up the captive portal. Once you auth from one device, any device behind the router is authed with the portal. This is because the hotel network just sees your router's IP/MAC.
- hshdhdhj4444 9mo ago
  What advantage does this have over the cheaper UniFi router in the OP?
  - fragmede 9mo ago
    It's available right now, for one.
  - SturgeonsLaw 9mo ago
    The UniFi router depends on you already having a UniFi environment. If you do, it's a good option, but the GL would work with any heterogeneous network
    - hshdhdhj4444 9mo ago
      Thanks! Thats helpful.
  - threatofrain 9mo ago
    The Beryl AX is going for cheaper ($70) on Amazon right now vs the UniFi Travel Router ($80). Better bang for the buck on both hardware and software without needing specific Ubiquiti anything.
- hakfoo 9mo ago
  I'm not using it for travel, but I got a GL-BE3600 recently and it's surprisingly decent as a home router for my very specific needs. I wired the desktop PCs in the house, so the only Wi-Fi users are mobiles, a smart TV, and a laptop. Everything else is already hanging off 2.5G wired switches. Pretty light duty, and I just wanted something that would provide robust routing and placeholder Wi-Fi. This does exactly that, and since it's OpenWRT based, it's probably marginally less terrible than whatever TP-Link was offering in the same price range. It does run annoyingly hot, but I should just buy a little USB desk fan and point it at the router :P
  - amluto 9mo ago
    I've had very impressive success running upstream OpenWRT on TP-Link hardware: I have Archer C7 access points running with literally years of uptime. That being said, for any new application, I suggest using at least an 802.11ax AP, because cheap 2.4GHz devices that support 802.11ax are becoming common and using an 802.11ac router means that your 2.4GHz devices will be stuck with 802.11n, which is quite a bit less efficient. Even if you don't need any appreciable speed, it's preferable to use a more efficient protocol that uses less airtime.
    - rpcope1 9mo ago
      Honestly if you're not invested in maybe Ruckus or Aruba, I don't think there's much better than OpenWRT on a decently supported AP. I had a bunch of the C7s with OpenWRT and they've been totally bulletproof. I only upgraded to R650s recently and it's not clear beyond maybe the antenna setup and the fact that it's ax now that it's much better.
    - hakfoo 9mo ago
      I think I actually retired an Archer C7 for this. The goal was something 2.5G ready because the city has systematically rolled out fibre to every neghbourhood around here and I'm just waiting for the knock.
    - skirmish 9mo ago
      Ditto, the TP-Link's Archer A7 firmware is a security nightmare [1] but with DD-WRT installed it is very stable and reliable. [1] Daughter invited ~10 classmates to prepare for a science competition, and one of them had a virus (I assume) that hacked TP-Link's firmware to draft it into a botnet. WAN connection would drop every hour for a few minutes, plus unexplained internet traffic while nobody was using it. Resetting firmware did not help, installing DD-WRT fixed it once and for all.
- te_chris 9mo ago
  Yes these are the way. Use them to get cheap anker security cams to work as baby monitors while we’re in hotel rooms
- copperx 9mo ago
  Do you mind expounding on how it has saved you? I'd love to know the practical use cases.
  - wateralien 9mo ago
    While on a scuba diving trip in Thailand a couple months ago we could position the router slightly outside our hotel room to be able to be able to strongly connect to the very dodgy hotel wifi so my girlfriend could do her work calls. It would also automatically log into the captive wifi which seemed to require a login every hour or so. Another time we Ethernet into it using the cable in another hotel to bypass some ridiculous speed limitations on their access point. I'm considering getting their model which can take SIM cards, so that we can also failover to mobile networks wherever we are.
- tomjen3 9mo ago
  I am apparently dumb. What benefit does this give you, other than a segregated network? Do us hotels typically have exposed Ethernet ports?
  - eliseumds 9mo ago
    I always travel with my GL.iNet GL-MT3000 (Beryl AX) and this is what I use it for: - My wife and I travel with multiple devices (laptops, phones, Chromecast...) and when we get to a hotel/Airbnb, I simply connect my Beryl AX to their network (it deals with captive portals btw) and all of our devices automatically connect. - I changed the `/etc/hosts` directly in the router, meaning I can test my local servers under custom domains easily on my other devices like phones/tablets without apps like SquidMan. - I route specific domains through specific VPNs. Government websites, streaming websites, AWS services, etc. - I can plug in a 4G USB modem into it and it can automatically fallback to it if the main connection drops. - It has built-in Tailscale support.
- forinti 9mo ago
  I really like my GLi microrouter. https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-usb150/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-usb150/ I bought it for my vacations, so I wouldn't have to configure my kid's gadgets, but it is really useful as a wifi adaptor too. And you can run it from a powerbank.
- hk1337 9mo ago
  I was thinking of using that in combination with Beelink ME Mini N150 with proxmox installed on it and host different net tools, git, etc that’s available on the go. I might be overthinking the setup
- RyJones 9mo ago
  I carry my GL.iNet GL-E750V2 all over the world.
- dwardu 9mo ago
  Is there a 5g dongle I can connect to it? I’ve been searching to no avail
- dionian 9mo ago
  should I be concerned this is Chinese-made? And will the UniFi have similar feature set?
cromka 9mo ago
This is brilliant, actually very innovative product by Unifi. It's interesting because it seems they do what Apple does: they can add new products and features only because all the devices work together in an ecosystem.
- libeclipse 9mo ago
  Innovative how? Many travel routers already exist and support similar features
  - cromka 9mo ago
    The way it automatically connects to your home and presents to your devices as part of your home WiFi. So you bring that device with you and everything else works like you're back home. I use OPNSense and OpenWRT myself and there's no way you can make travel routers this convenient with them.
    - walterbell 9mo ago
      > presents to your devices as part of your home WiFi That will be fun for browser geolocation based on WiFi name.
      - shermantanktop 9mo ago
        In a 1 bit environment (==single SSID visible), sure. But most of the time multiple SSIDs are visible, and correlate to each, making detection of abnormalities easier. And the lat/long is also visible to help disambiguate.
        walterbell 9mo ago
        Would both the stationary and mobile instances of that SSID be visible on public databases like https://wigle.net https://wigle.net?
        gruez 9mo ago
makestuff 9mo ago
It seems like the main feature is being able to access your home network to watch netflix, access LAN devices, etc. How is this different compared to running a tailscale exit node in your home network? Is the benefit of this that you have a hardware device that you can connect to instead of needing software like tailscale?
- slig 9mo ago
  I have a hard time believing anyone would actually use this versus self-hosting headscale in a discarded ThinkCentre and running it from a closet.
  - nickt 9mo ago
    Not sure if you’re serious but reeks of “you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially”
    - slig 9mo ago
      Not serious, and you got it.
    - olalonde 9mo ago
      Obligatory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
    - fweimer 9mo ago
      But Unifi should be able to implement this with zero extra hardware, just with VPN-style clients on phones and laptops? I'm just surprised this needs an extra device. It would make sense if the device provided its own connectivity (with global wireless service, say), but this doesn't seem to be the case here. It still needs an uplink.
      - Polycryptus 9mo ago
        That's already an option, too.
syntaxing 9mo ago
I really like “bring your home everywhere aspect”. I can be a pain connecting my whole family devices to another SSID. If it can do WiFi repeating (as in login to a single hotel account and stream to rest of device), I would absolutely get one. If not, GL inet is still the way to go
- notyourwork 9mo ago
  Can GL inet not do that? Genuinely asking.
  - eps 9mo ago
    This Unifi device is primarily meant as an add-on to exising Unifi setups as it's all well integrated.
  - tguvot 9mo ago
    can do it
  - teeray 9mo ago
    Can confirm. It also has a mode to jump through the captive portal. I just set it up with the same SSID and PSK as my home wifi and everything we bring connects automatically. It also routes everything through Tailscale.
    - guiambros 9mo ago
      Yep, I have the same set up. Use GL router to connect to the hotel wifi, and all devices are automatically connected, without captive portal on each one. Added bonus that I can use tailscale on the GL router to route remote traffic through my tailnet -- including devices where I can't install tailscale client (e.g. corp laptop).
- pyrolistical 9mo ago
  ? You just need to set it up once and devices will auto reconnect by default
- 9mo ago
saagarjha 9mo ago
Available December 29th: https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/utr https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/utr
- nerdix 9mo ago
  Wifi 5 for an $80 router in 2026 (I mean we're almost there) is pretty disappointing. I get that its mostly going to be used on crappy hotel networks and the crappy hotel network will often be the bottleneck but $80 looks to be roughly twice the price of the typical travel wifi 5 travel router, about equal to the price of a typical wifi 6 travel router, and only $30-40 cheaper than a typical wifi 7 travel router. I don't mind a unifi premium for the integration but they should at least have a $50 wifi 5 version and a $100 wifi 6 "pro" version
  - novok 9mo ago
    I'd pay $30 for the software alone that actually works.
  - j45 9mo ago
    It’s wifi 5 but the most interesting part is it uses 5w of power max, I thought it’d be more.
    - kstrauser 9mo ago
      That’s a lot of power for a radio you’re right next to. You don’t need 100W to stream Netflix.
      - j45 9mo ago
        Interesting, I was thinking of it more from a travel perspective of running it from a shared power supply or something but you make a valid point.
  - hmottestad 9mo ago
    I didn’t think there was much point in WiFi 6 unless you go 6e and get the 6Ghz frequency?
allovertheworld 9mo ago
whats the point of this? I got wireguard on my phone connected to my home network (also unifi). If this device had a 5g sim slot, then I could see the point but it’s not that.
- WillPostForFood 9mo ago
  The main benefit of a travel router is creating a private network, and sharing a wifi connection. An iPhone can't do that, though Android phones can.
  - hnburnsy 9mo ago
    Some third party WiFis limit the number of devices. This gets around that limit.
  - girishso 9mo ago
    > though Android phones can Interesting, as someone who has always used iPhones, wouldn't mind getting an Android phone for this. Is there some app?
    - stuxnet79 9mo ago
      No it's provided as part of the Android OS. Very simple and intuitive to use and has been for the past 10 years since I started using it. The only thing that was annoying initially was that you couldn't pass through the WiFi that your phone is connected to but I think that was corrected in later versions of Android. For a time I was using one of my older Pixel phones as a WiFi extender to improve signal in my home's basement. Worked like a charm. I'm honestly surprised this isn't available on iOS.
  - allovertheworld 9mo ago
    Sharing where? All my devices can connect directly thru to Wireguard vpn on my home network. Ipad, iphone, MBP, etc A 5g phone tethering to your Wireguard connected MBP beats this out of the water
cyberrock 9mo ago
I wish one of these devices would have an internal battery again like the old HooToo Tripmates. Using it with a power bank doesn't feel quite the same.
- aspenmayer 9mo ago
  GL-iNet’s Mudi product line has an internal battery and eSIM and physical SIM card support. Mudi V2: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e750/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e750/ They have an upcoming 5G NR WiFi 7 version: Mudi 7: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e5800/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e5800/
  - Terretta 9mo ago
    Effectively nobody sells Wi-Fi 7 capable gear yet: https://www.rtings.com/router/learn/research/wifi-7-mlo https://www.rtings.com/router/learn/research/wifi-7-mlo
tonymet 9mo ago
I clone my home WiFi SSID with my travel router so when we arrive at the hotel all of our devices auto connect without having to configure the consent / captive WiFi screen. It’s also nice to control VPN and DNS from one place , in case the hotel is doing DNS or IP filtering. And quite a few hotels still offer wired Ethernet , which helps performance.
- jasoncartwright 9mo ago
  Hotel wifi is often hilariously slow compared to plugging my travel router into an in-room ethernet socket. From spotty <10mbps to often a full uncontended gigabit. Makes video conferencing and large downloads usable.
  - forwardandback 9mo ago
    I hadn't considered this advantage. Hotel wifi is indeed often crappy.
GlenTheMachine 9mo ago
I travel internationally all the time. Someone tell me why I need this.
- novok 9mo ago
  You have a workplace that insists you are working from your home while you travel. It has limits, like the amazon hardware keypress thingy with north korea showed recently, but unless your working at superbigtech or defense contractor it would probably work.
- aghilmort 9mo ago
  connect screenless devices, e.g., Echo Dot extend weak wireless range in hotel screen share or network between multiple devices eg travel with two laptops and can virtual KVM only have to do the captive device on one - many hotels limit number of devices extra security buffer phone can't bridge wifi for headless like this etc etc
- ssl-3 9mo ago
  You don't need this. Strictly speaking, we don't need much. But a travel router can be nice to have. I bring some tech with me when I travel. Obviously a phone, but also a decent-sounding smart speaker with long battery life so I can hear some music of my choosing in decent fidelity without using Bluetooth [bonus: battery-backed alarm clock!], a laptop for computing, a streaming box for plugging into the TV, maybe some manner of SBC to futz with if I'm bored and can't sleep during downtime. All of this stuff really wants to have a [wifi] connection to a local area network, like it has when I'm at home. A travel router (this one, or something from any other vendor mentioned in these threads, or just about anything that can run openwrt well) solves that problem. All I have to do is get the router connected to the Internet however I do that (maybe there's ethernet, decent wifi, or maybe my phone hotspot or USB tethering is the order of the day), and then everything else Just Works as soon as it is unpacked and switched on. And it all works togetherly, on my own wireless LAN -- just as those things also work at home. Bonus nachos: With some manner of VPN like Tailscale configured in the router, or the automagic stuff this UBNT device is claimed to be able to do, a person can bring their home LAN with them, too -- without individual devices being configured to do that. I think travel routers are pretty great, myself. (But using Ubiquiti gear makes me feel filthy for reasons that I can't properly articulate, so I stick with things like Latvian-built Mikrotik hardware or something running OpenWRT for my own travel router uses.)
qgin 9mo ago
> Automatic handling of captive portal authentication Very curious about how they're pulling this off
- varenc 9mo ago
  Details are scarce right now, but they say that via the UniFi mobile you'll authenticate yourself onto the captive portal and the travel router will use that. Guessing it'll clone your phone's MAC?
- hollow-moe 9mo ago
  Don't need to do anything specific, doing this with my openwrt router in uni dorm. Router to upstream, phone to router, captive portal shows up on phone just have to login and all devices on router are logged in (and most importantly only count as 1 device)
bnc319 9mo ago
So… hear me out. Could I connect this to an airline’s paid in-flight WiFi network, and then broadcast an open network to effectively open up access to all other passengers for free? If enough WiFi pirates do this on flights perhaps it would kill paid WiFi entirely (just need enough Good Samaritans) (And yes I know there are other bypasses you can do like spoofing MAC addresses to get around some device count restrictions)
- IncreasePosts 9mo ago
  Maybe. And then get throttled or banned for using too much bandwidth. You don't need this product to do this though, you can do the same thing with a laptop and your phone
  - ec109685 9mo ago
    They throttle.
- gdw2 9mo ago
  Android phones can share their wifi connection like this.
  - jser 9mo ago
    I carry a burner Android just for this feature. Great for sharing with my iPhone and iPad on a flight.
  - pityJuke 9mo ago
    Insane to me that Apple still does not support this.
    - xp84 9mo ago
      Not that surprising. Unless you’re going to sell access to that hotspot and give Apple a 30% cut, it really wouldn’t interest Tim Cook.
    - 9mo ago
baggy_trough 9mo ago
I need something like this to share a single wifi connection among devices on a cruise. I don't care about the home network access though. Any recommendations?
- dxxvi 9mo ago
  You can search for "travel router" on youtube, buy a router like in the videos and done. However, a lot of cruise ships forbid travel routers, so you might need to buy a router which you can take the antenna out (keep the router in one luggage, the antenna in another luggage :-) ). I never did that though.
- libria 9mo ago
  There are variants of this kind that double as and look like a battery charger (which you should claim) but can also repeat and NAT a wireless signal (which you should helpfully omit). Rumor says mudiv2 but I've never used that so can't confirm.
shmoogy 9mo ago
Wonder how this will work to connect into hotel networks - on my glinet I have to clone my iPhone MAC address so I basically have to connect to the WiFi, do the with authentication enter room number and last name, then disconnect and boot up the router. Is there a better way to get these connected to a WiFi for relaying where the Ethernet isn't an option?
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  A $40 router with WiFi to WiFi bridge support like the TP-Link AC750. You connect the router to the captive network and you connect your phone to the router. Connect everything else to the router.
- avidiax 9mo ago
  I have a gl.Inet and it's very rare that I have to do anything special to get on a captive portal. I just connect to the travel router AP, then connect the travel router to the hotel's WiFi, and browse neverssl.com to get the captive portal.
- bananadonkey 9mo ago
  This new Unifi device supports captive portal authentication flows, so you don't need to do that whole shuffle. Source https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruv550at3k8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruv550at3k8
firecall 9mo ago
>while captive portal logins on hotel networks are handled quietly in the background. Anyone know how it automagically sorts out connecting to the hotel WiFi? Hotels often want some combination of my room number and surname I've found, or some combination of hotel name and floor password.
- dingwallr 9mo ago
  "To connect the UniFi Travel Router to a guest network, open the UniFi Mobile App and select a nearby wireless network. If the network has a captive portal, it will automatically forward to your mobile device for login." from the FAQ https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/utr https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/utr
  - varenc 9mo ago
    It likely relies on the travel router cloning the MAC address of your phone or whatever you use to authenticate. That way the hotel just thinks the travel router is your phone.
    - dawnerd 9mo ago
      It’s also (I’d hope) modifying the ttl as that’s used to detect travel routers.
- MobileVet 9mo ago
  Took my PS5 Pro on a work trip. Was livid to find out the horrific 'browser' on the PS5 wasn't able to handle the captive portal login page. $700 gaming rig and it can't load a simple HTML page so I can enter my name and room number?! Ridiculous. Thought about it for a few minutes and realized that the portal was likely just doing mac filtering. So I adjusted my MacBook Pro's MAC address to be the same as the PS5, went through the portal login and then powered down the MBP. Booted up the PS5 and I was online. Damn it feels good to be a gangster.
  - avhception 9mo ago
JSR_FDED 9mo ago
Related, the GLiNet Comet (remote KVM) are also excellent. Have bought one for every elderly family member so I can support them more easily.
- omnibrain 9mo ago
  How does it compare to the PiKVM?
  - forbiddenlake 9mo ago
    Much less expensive (barring diy and print-a-case-yourself), and most importantly to certain people, easily available in the US from Amazon. (Jetkvm also suffers from unclear import costs and delays)
- yjftsjthsd-h 9mo ago
  Oh, that's tempting. Is there vanilla openwrt or any other all-FOSS firmware for it? I'm rather paranoid about this kind of appliance.
- redrove 9mo ago
  This would’ve been great 15y ago, but today they all want help on their phone and there’s no good way of doing that.
DetectDefect 9mo ago
Have Ubiquiti/Unifi firmware/devices ever been subject to independent, third-party security testing? Surely a company charging such a premium for high-end devices has invested in such processes and is proud to showcase them ...
- ec109685 9mo ago
  You should overlay something else rather than rely on WiFi securiry. Tailscale or a vpn, private cloud or just tls, depending on your threat model.
  - DetectDefect 9mo ago
    None of those would not prevent someone owning your device because the firmware has vulnerabilities.
- NoiseBert69 9mo ago
  As much I love Unifi products I dislike their privacy policy: > Usage Data. We may collect certain information about your devices, your network, your system and third party devices connected to your network or system when you use the Services ("Usage Data"), including but not limited to device data, performance data, sensor data, motion data, temperature data, power usage data, device signals, device parameters, device identifiers that may uniquely identify the devices, including mobile devices, web request, Internet Protocol address, location information (including latitude and longitude), browser type, browser language, referring/exit pages and URLs, platform type, the date and time of your request, and one or more cookies, web beacons and JavaScript that may uniquely identify your devices or browser. https://www.ui.com/legal/privacypolicy/#c1 https://www.ui.com/legal/privacypolicy/#c1
  - ramzez 9mo ago
    you can disable it in settings https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042384093-Analytics-Data-Collection-FAQ https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042384093-Analytics...
FrameworkFred 9mo ago
To all the commenters who asked if it's worth it? IMO it's super worth it if you have more than one wifi access point and it gets more and more worth it as your network gets more complicated. I upgraded to homogenous ubiquiti/unifi when I set up a point to multi-point on my farm because I thought it would make that part easier. Surprisingly, those links aren't really baked in to the rest of it, but the router and wifi antennas that I've installed around those links "just work" with a private, protected, and guest network. I used to have to update two different routers with the same SSID, username and password to make "hopping" from one to the next "seamless" and, now that I've got 8 wifi antennas in a mesh with a single UI to configure them all, I can't even imagine how I'd do it with the hodge-podge of gear I used to work with. And I'm probably going to buy a travel router, but I'm wondering, if I use it connect to the hotel wifi, will I be able to use the thing as a wifi hotspot as well or do I have to use an ethernet point because the wifi is "taken"?
- nixgeek 9mo ago
  You can connect a UTR to the hotel network, and also connect your devices via WiFi to it; works just like GL.iNet's Slate 7 in this regard.
jbverschoor 9mo ago
Oh I thought one with 5g cellular connectivity
donkeylazy456 9mo ago
it says travel but not supporting LTE/5G
- ec109685 9mo ago
  Travel to a hotel.
- allovertheworld 9mo ago
  Yea if this had 5g it would be worth it
  - idoescompooters 9mo ago
    Yeah you're not gonna get a cellular modem under $100 USD. Sorry
darkreader 9mo ago
[dead]
dawnerd 9mo ago
Really wish their press Release / marketing want obviously llm generated. Im their target audience for sure but I’m not sure I need all of the same features my home network has. Really my travel router is just used to share a paid connection and run AdGuard network wide.
fnord77 9mo ago
I don't understand this post. Is it an ad? I have wireguard running on my home router. Why do I need a piece of hardware when my laptop already can connect to it from anywhere?
- NoiseBert69 9mo ago
  I've been to many hotels/apartments where you have to place the router on a very specific location because the Wifi/4G/5G coverage is super bad. With Teltonica/GL.Inet you also can use small external antennas. Getting behind windows is often enough.
- allovertheworld 9mo ago
  This is for those not aware of that setup lmao
system2 9mo ago
The page doesn't even have a buy button. Why?
- zer0x4d 9mo ago
  UniFi website and marketing is just really really bad. They have amazing products but for some reason they don't really care about consumers and don't really know how to market to consumers. Just look at their website, it's impossible to find anything other than some super super specific networking stuff that you probably need a CCNP to even begin to understand
- jasoncartwright 9mo ago
  Because it's not available until the 29th
apexalpha 9mo ago
Does this also bridge L2 stuff so I am actually on my LAN? Otherwise I don't really see the point to carry a specific hotspot device when my phone has one built in.
easyKL 9mo ago
Please also consider the GL-iNEt Puli (XE300): - 5V 2A USB C connector and a 5000mAh battery - SIM and [not tested by myself] eSIM support. - Tailscale and Nebula available as a plug-in. - Main network and guest network can be set. - OpenWRT if you want the GL-iNET firmware.
- jagermo 9mo ago
  I am running a Netgear Nighthawk when I am on the road. But the Mubi7 looks interesting - I would not want to go back from 5G to a slower networks, sorry :)
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
Brajeshwar 9mo ago
This is brilliant, especially if you are already invested in the Ubiquiti/UniFi Ecosystem. There was a UniFi Teleport, and I think that function is now part of this Travel Router. From the video and the images, I believe this can also be added to a car act as a family wi-fi on the move. I’ve always had a Pocket Travel Router (along with a thin but long enough RJ45 cable) with me while traveling, starting with the D-Link AC750 Travel Router. It does away with Wi-Fi Change, and all of your devices just continue to work, no worry about syncing, file-transfers, etc. A travel router becomes even more convenient when traveling with the family.
frugalmail 9mo ago
It reads "Tethered 5G", why would a high-end travel router not support sim/e-sims directly?!
- oseityphelysiol 9mo ago
  79$ is not “high end”. 5G enabled router would cost twice as much - for a feature that not everybody will need.
- StrLght 9mo ago
  Why would it? 5G modems are expensive. GL.iNet makes something like that, Puli AX — it usually goes for around $350 [1]. [1]: https://store.gl-inet.com/products/puli-ax-xe3000-wi-fi-6-5g-cellular-router-with-battery/ https://store.gl-inet.com/products/puli-ax-xe3000-wi-fi-6-5g...
matt-p 9mo ago
I never really understand why you'd rather have one of these over just enabling "hotspot" on your phone. Ethernet is the only reason I can think of
- stavros 9mo ago
  If you have an Android phone you can connect a USB-C to Ethernet dongle (the same one as you have for your laptop) and get tethering via Ethernet out of it. It works really well.
- chrisan 9mo ago
  we take a webcam to keep eye on dogs sometimes. I use a travel router for that
  - matt-p 9mo ago
    This is a really fair example.
- barrkel 9mo ago
  What if you want your kid(s) and/or partner(s) to stay connected after you leave the hotel room with your phone? What if you want to use the hotel's internet connection instead of your roaming data? What if you want to use wireguard or tailscale to funnel all traffic through your home network? What if you want to enable your family's devices to connect to your self-hosted services?
  - apexalpha 9mo ago
    1. Fair enough. 2. Most Android phones can do this. 3. Android phones can do this. 4. This is just the same question as 3.
    - Moldoteck 9mo ago
      2 - without prior config only a bunch can do it, like pixels 3 - there's a difference - you can configure wg/ts on a single device(router) and it's done, or you need to do it on 5X+ devices, phones and laptops and fix the configs on all if something changes
barrkel 9mo ago
Tailscale? (I don't think it does) WAN connectivity via USB tethering and ethernet, not just wifi? The blog has almost no details, but the product page is also pretty light on technical details. The competition (I use GL-MT3000) is pretty strong.
- dzikimarian 9mo ago
  It makes more sense if you are used to Ubiquiti ecosystem. Basically they assume you have Ubiquiti-based home/office network (they call it site). Then this device binds to this site and VPNs to it over Teleport (kinda similar thing to Tailscale, also built on top of wireguard). I would assume you can also configure Wireguard/Open VPN/IPsec manually as this is pretty standard in their ecosystem. I guess it's nice if you are in Ubiquiti ecosystem already and want as little friction as possible. Otherwise it's probably similar to any travel router.
mariopt 9mo ago
This won’t replace my GL-AXT1800 which offers a lot more flexibility. Unifi shipping without eSIM support is a big mistake imo. I don’t want to have a 5g router(which are insanely expensive) or a second smartphone with 5G.
- dfc 9mo ago
  It doesn't have a modem. Why would it support eSIM?
  - mariopt 9mo ago
    It would be super convenient, given it's size, for me to purchase a eSim card abroad with unlimited data and not having to drain my phone battery. This is a travel router.
    - dfc 9mo ago
      This is a travel router without a modem. It would be super inconvenient if you bought an eSIM for a device that does not have a modem. You might as well by an eSIM for your toothbrush when you are traveling abroad, it would equally "convenient."
QuiEgo 9mo ago
When I travel, I like carrying as little as possible. These comments are fascinating to me, people are brining more devices than I have in my whole house and needing to make a LAN for them. Personally I just connect my phone to WiFi and then use Tailscale and call it a day.
- apexalpha 9mo ago
  Some people spend 100+ days a year in hotels.
  - bicx 9mo ago
    I spent about 30 days this year in hotels and don't envy these people at all.
    - wasmainiac 9mo ago
      Yeah same. It is borring, yet unfamiliar enough to chill. Same thing kind of applies to eating out for every meal.
  - itake 9mo ago
    I spend about 200 days in hotels and I don’t want the extra weight or deal with dns/paywall issues
  - QuiEgo 9mo ago
    I did 82 days last year. Everyone travels different, but for me I feel like any time I spend watching TV in the hotel is wasted time - I'm in a whole other city, surely there's something I can do? The hotel is just somewhere to take a shower and sleep. I don't watch much TV in general though so I guess it's easier for me.
    - massysett 9mo ago
      If I'm traveling for work, I'm working all day. At the end of the day I often just want to rest in the hotel room, especially if I take my dinner in a restaurant. Typically I don't watch the hotel TV though, as I don't want to figure out what channels are on it and I probably wouldn't want to watch them anyway. If I watch anything it will be on my iPad.
seemaze 9mo ago
I built my Unifi system around my Tailscale network, so I get basically the same benefits for free. I guess you either put in the admin effort up front, or pay the appliance tax on the back. What am I missing?
jimmydoe 9mo ago
$79 is over priced, get a GL.iNet Or just go Tailscale
- jibe 9mo ago
  $79 is so cheap that if it saves you 5 min in setup it pays for the difference to a GL.iNet/tailscale setup.
  - jimmydoe 9mo ago
    as a frequent traveler, most of my setup time were spent on captive portal. so unless Unifi changes that dramatically, otherwise the time cost is more of less the same.
jackhuman 9mo ago
I’ve been using a travel router with a battery last few years, so if I get internet on a plane, all of our devices get online access vs just one single phone.
fmajid 9mo ago
I used to have a UniFi gateway for the nice traffic visualization but Ubiquiti lost my trust when they started running telemetry without consent and I’ve gone back to an OpenBSD’s box as router, thus this device does little for me. I’m looking forward to the GL.Inet MUDI 7, their first 5G hotspot, which should be running an open-source and hackable OS unlike most hotspots: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e5800/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e5800/
- jtokoph 9mo ago
  I’ve been waiting for one of these with built in eSIM support
  - jpgvm 9mo ago
    This one has eSIM and dual physical SIM support.
    - mootothemax 9mo ago
      I’m really struggling to understand the SIM side, the page talks about 5G while tethered to a phone?
      - vsviridov 9mo ago
        I think these models can act as router while leveraging RNDIS tethering if you don't have a separate sim card...
        mootothemax 9mo ago
        Zero mention of anything other than WiFi on its tech specs page :-/ https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-wifi/products/utr https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-wifi/products/utr
    - InTheArena 9mo ago
      This is incorrect. No sim support here, and no cellular modem either :-)
natbobc 9mo ago
If this has a wifi antenna port would be very useful for marina wifi if you’re sailing around.
smileybarry 9mo ago
All the videos I've seen show it adopted by an existing UniFi site, I wonder if I can still set it up as a standalone device? Hopefully even set up the VPN functionality to some WireGuard server (which was implied somewhere where it listed OpenVPN & WireGuard, can't find it now).
- InTheArena 9mo ago
  You’re probably better off getting a GL device. They already have support.
yoan9224 9mo ago
been using a gl.inet axt1800 for travel and it's been amazing. mainly for hotel wifi where you can login once and all your devices connect automatically. curious how this compares - the unifi ecosystem integration could be nice but gl.inet is way more hackable
forwardandback 9mo ago
If I want to run NixOS on a cheap travel router, what are my best options? Ideally mainline Linux support.
- forwardandback 9mo ago
  Brief research suggests one of the NanoPis.

472 points by flurdy 9mo ago

I never travel without my GL-AXT1800. Saved me so many times: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-axt1800/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-axt1800/ I’m actually on it right now.

matt-attack 9mo ago
What’s the use case exactly?
- tstrimple 9mo ago
  One is actually usable wifi at hotels with ethernet cables available. I don't use that device, but a DIY version that also acts as a portable media server while traveling. We can tunnel back to our home network, but often stay places with very bad reception and or internet access. Also helps keep the kids entertained on longer road trips. They can connect their devices to the router as we travel and have full access to the cached media.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  I have this. TP-Link AC750 https://a.co/d/esxrRA4 https://a.co/d/esxrRA4 When you are some place with a captive network and want to use devices that don’t have a browser. You connect the router to the WiFi network that has internet access and you connect the other WiFi network to a device with a browser like your phone. Every device looks like one device to the captive network and you can use them all. Second use case, I now live in a place with a shared internet access that is shared between all of the units. Anyone can broadcast to and control our Roku device and there is no way to block it from the Roku. We create a private network with the router
kstrauser 9mo ago
Heartily seconded! A friend recommended I get one and now I push all my other technical friends to buy one, too. My wife and I traveled a bit this year and it was great having all our gadgets connecting to a single AP under our control. It’s easily paid for itself by avoiding ludicrous per-device daily charges.
- windexh8er 9mo ago
  I think most travel APs can generally do this, but the feature that makes GL.iNet products popular is: extensibility. I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand for manufacturers, but making products useful via extensibility is a sure fire way to open your target market directly up to prosumers. And those are the buyers that will find you. I own two of their products, one of them I bought in 2019 and can still run what I need to on it.
  - WhyNotHugo 9mo ago
    Readers of HN will value flexibility and extensibility, but the other 99% of the folks there are fine with totally locked-down devices because it’s the only thing they know of. The lack of extensibility likely doesn’t affect sales/profit in any significant proportion.
  - xgbi 9mo ago
    My wife’s work WiFi is handled by a gl.inet 150 (https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar150/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar150/) which is tucked behind her desk since at least 2019. Vanilla openwrt on it, provides WiFi from an Ethernet slot in the wall. Uptime is in years, it’s invisible and chugs along without visible power draw. All her devices connect to it, including her Cisco voip phone. It autossh to my ovh server with remote port forward for remote admin. Cost me 15€ in 2016.
    - TeMPOraL 9mo ago
      >> I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand for manufacturers > My wife’s work WiFi is handled by a gl.inet 150 (...) since at least 2019. All her devices connect to it (...) Cost me 15€ in 2016. I think this answers GP's question as (yet another) solid reason why manufacturers "can't understand" prosumer needs - it's because targeting prosumers, or generally making products that "just works", is very bad for sales down the line.
      - qilo 9mo ago
theoreticalmal 9mo ago
What is the benefit of this over, for example, an iPhone hotspot?
- WillPostForFood 9mo ago
  An iPhone can't bridge a wifi network. So you need something like a travel router to share a wifi connection.
  - rtkwe 9mo ago
    They're suggesting just running off your data plan which works for domestic travel (at least to urban areas with good cell service) and can work for international if you go through getting a data eSim.
- trelane 9mo ago
  You can control it from the ground up, including installing alternate firmware. You can also use VPNs etc.
- neither_color 9mo ago
  Run one wireguard server in your home and one client instance on this router and now all of your devices can share the same residential VPN connection. No fraud blocks or extra verifications from your banking apps, no million suspicious login detected from all your social accounts, use your home netflix account, etc. All without your individual devices running a VPN app.
  - drnick1 9mo ago
    > Run one wireguard server in your home and one client instance on this router and now all of your devices can share the same residential VPN connection. You don't need a "travel router" for this. My phone is permanently connected to my server via Wireguard (so that I can access my files from anywhere). Adding another device just requires adding a peer in the server's config file and can be accomplished very quickly. It's not clear what problem the travel router solves, unless perhaps you travel with dozens of devices. > no million suspicious login detected from all your social accounts, I can personally do without those.
kleinsch 9mo ago
Huge plus one. Useful to bridge hotel wifi so all my devices connect automatically, also useful as an ad-hoc router that fits into my travel pack.
hnburnsy 9mo ago
Have you tried hooking it up to an Ethernet port in a hotel room like the one that the TV uses?
- avidiax 9mo ago
  This rarely works. The TV network is usually access controlled, so you either won't get an IP or you simply won't have internet access. Some hotel rooms (particularly older business hotels) will have an ethernet port for the guest. These work maybe 50% of the time these days. Sometimes you can find a Ruckus AP in your room at outlet level, and these usually have several ethernet ports on the bottom. These also have a working port around 30% of the time. So, TL;DR: various ethernet ports in hotel rooms work less than half the time these days.
  - fastcall 9mo ago
    How’s that access control handled? Very easy to spoof the MAC of the TV or setup some SNI spoofing proxy server, NGFWs with TLS Active Probing are probably harder to deal with but do hotels really have that?
    - SomeUserName432 9mo ago
      > Very easy to spoof the MAC of the TV or setup some SNI spoofing proxy server At that point you're in the 0.1% that the hotel does not really need to worry about. The other >99% will still need to pay for wifi.
      - danw1979 9mo ago
        it’s probably >0.1% here …
  - hnburnsy 9mo ago
    I've read the GL.inet can easily clone the TV Mac, pretty cool.
ei8ths 9mo ago
these are awesome, i just take my old wifi router tp-link, its big though. I might have to get one of these little guys.
cosmosgenius 9mo ago
Is this any better than just doing Hotspot with wifi bridge? I just have my hotspot on my pixel for my devices to connect to. Pixel itself is connected to whatever "public wifi" is there.
- gruez 9mo ago
  Does that actually work? I don't think you can both have hotspot on and be connected to another network.
  - panarky 9mo ago
    Yes, it has actually worked starting with the Pixel 3. It's called Dual-Band Simultaneous or "STA+AP" (Station + Access Point) concurrency that can bridge an existing wifi connection to an access point to other devices via a hotspot.
  - dorfsmay 9mo ago
    Yes it works. Now you can also tether via USB. Both of them have worked flawlessly for me recently.
  - Doohickey-d 9mo ago
    It seems to be only on certain devices feature(?): on my Pixel it worked, Samsung phone just says "sorry, can't do that".
  - esperent 9mo ago
    Most newer (or at least new + expensive) phones can share their wifi connection via hotspot. 2.4gh only though I think.
    - mi_lk 9mo ago
      Do you know what’s the technical term to search if a phone has that capability? Asking for an iPhone
      - 9mo ago
guiambros 9mo ago
Same! And the best thing is that you can install Tailscale, so you can connect to your tailnet, and exit all traffic through one of your nodes (e.g., your home/office network). It's incredibly useful, with the added bonus that you don't need to install tailscale client in any of your travel devices (phone, tablet, work computer, etc).
- echelon 9mo ago
  These are neat in that you can jump on and extend existing wifi infra, but it'd be nice if they also included 5G. I want a product that does both. It's cool to have your own network in a hotel. But it'd be nice to be able to do that on the road, away from public wifi, internationally, whenever - which hotspots do. But at the same time, it'd be nice to be able to do the WiFi thing too to cut back on data usage. I frequently blow through my hotspot data. I'd rather this be in one device instead of two. Beggars can't be choosers, though, I suppose?
  - sokoloff 9mo ago
    I’m using a GLinet GL-XE3000 for that and it’s great. Initial setup of the 5G eSIM on a physical SIM took a little searching but it’s been rock solid and having consistent access on the road and hotels has been great for family travel. It has a built-in battery, but I’ve never really tested the duration (I suspect it’s 3-6 hours) as I put it on its AC adapter in the hotel and the n a cigarette lighter adapter in the car, so the battery gets used 15-45 minutes at a time to bridge between those two places. I like it enough that I might buy a second, more compact unit for when space is more a premium, but I’ve been really happy with this one.
    - SergeAx 9mo ago
      What is your usage scenario for this device? It's $400 and 3/4 kg.
      - sokoloff 9mo ago
        I bought that specific model to provide connectivity for our robotics team’s pit computers. For this need, good antenna performance is key, since different venues differ wildly in WiFi and cell coverage and when we setup the evening before comps, I want the best chance of getting a solid connection and offering it to the pit LAN. But now that I have it, the device is handy for family travel as well. Put an unlimited data eSIM in the device and everyone has “unlimited” data n the road and when we arrive at a hotel or AirBnB, one person signs it on to wifi and everyone is connected, including tailscale connections to home. If I was doing personal and work travel only, I’d look for a smaller unit, but still with a decent battery.
password4321 9mo ago
I could never figure out which gl-inet to get, since some of the newer products seemed less powerful than older ones depending on the product family or something...
- torginus 9mo ago
  Not sure if you're talking in the context of travel routers, but if you're not, the Flint 2 is always a solid pick.
- TeMPOraL 9mo ago
  > some of the newer products seemed less powerful than older ones Cynic in me thinks it's because they don't want you to buy one product and be set for a decade, like HN-er here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46373387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46373387. Older products might've been too good.
- wateralien 9mo ago
  I think the GL-X3000 could be the daddy for power users and any eventuality: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-x3000/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-x3000/
upcoming-sesame 9mo ago
How do you handle captive portals in hotels ?
- mmerickel 9mo ago
  Connect on your phone or other device. Connect to travel router. Clone the mac address of your device. Connect router to wifi. Adjust device to not auto login. Good to go.
  - dalanmiller 9mo ago
    Is this an annoying amount of steps? And do you have to do this on every expiry of your session on the portal?
  - figmert 9mo ago
    GL.iNet routers don't even need this. It has an option to pass through captive portals. So you connect to your GL.iNet AP, then you set it up for the hotel WiFi, tick the option for passing through (it essentially disables VPN, AdGuard Home and other things if enabled), it will then link you to the captive portal where you can log in as you would otherwise. Once the internet is active, the GL.iNet router will then re-enable things like VPN and AdGuard Home. Since these devices are OpenWrt underneath with a pretier ui, I presume this is all possible on any OpenWrt device.
- jtokoph 9mo ago
  Usually you connect your laptop/phone to the portable router network, which then just pulls up the captive portal. Once you auth from one device, any device behind the router is authed with the portal. This is because the hotel network just sees your router's IP/MAC.
hshdhdhj4444 9mo ago
What advantage does this have over the cheaper UniFi router in the OP?
- fragmede 9mo ago
  It's available right now, for one.
- SturgeonsLaw 9mo ago
  The UniFi router depends on you already having a UniFi environment. If you do, it's a good option, but the GL would work with any heterogeneous network
  - hshdhdhj4444 9mo ago
    Thanks! Thats helpful.
- threatofrain 9mo ago
  The Beryl AX is going for cheaper ($70) on Amazon right now vs the UniFi Travel Router ($80). Better bang for the buck on both hardware and software without needing specific Ubiquiti anything.
hakfoo 9mo ago
I'm not using it for travel, but I got a GL-BE3600 recently and it's surprisingly decent as a home router for my very specific needs. I wired the desktop PCs in the house, so the only Wi-Fi users are mobiles, a smart TV, and a laptop. Everything else is already hanging off 2.5G wired switches. Pretty light duty, and I just wanted something that would provide robust routing and placeholder Wi-Fi. This does exactly that, and since it's OpenWRT based, it's probably marginally less terrible than whatever TP-Link was offering in the same price range. It does run annoyingly hot, but I should just buy a little USB desk fan and point it at the router :P
- amluto 9mo ago
  I've had very impressive success running upstream OpenWRT on TP-Link hardware: I have Archer C7 access points running with literally years of uptime. That being said, for any new application, I suggest using at least an 802.11ax AP, because cheap 2.4GHz devices that support 802.11ax are becoming common and using an 802.11ac router means that your 2.4GHz devices will be stuck with 802.11n, which is quite a bit less efficient. Even if you don't need any appreciable speed, it's preferable to use a more efficient protocol that uses less airtime.
  - rpcope1 9mo ago
    Honestly if you're not invested in maybe Ruckus or Aruba, I don't think there's much better than OpenWRT on a decently supported AP. I had a bunch of the C7s with OpenWRT and they've been totally bulletproof. I only upgraded to R650s recently and it's not clear beyond maybe the antenna setup and the fact that it's ax now that it's much better.
  - hakfoo 9mo ago
    I think I actually retired an Archer C7 for this. The goal was something 2.5G ready because the city has systematically rolled out fibre to every neghbourhood around here and I'm just waiting for the knock.
  - skirmish 9mo ago
    Ditto, the TP-Link's Archer A7 firmware is a security nightmare [1] but with DD-WRT installed it is very stable and reliable. [1] Daughter invited ~10 classmates to prepare for a science competition, and one of them had a virus (I assume) that hacked TP-Link's firmware to draft it into a botnet. WAN connection would drop every hour for a few minutes, plus unexplained internet traffic while nobody was using it. Resetting firmware did not help, installing DD-WRT fixed it once and for all.
te_chris 9mo ago
Yes these are the way. Use them to get cheap anker security cams to work as baby monitors while we’re in hotel rooms
copperx 9mo ago
Do you mind expounding on how it has saved you? I'd love to know the practical use cases.
- wateralien 9mo ago
  While on a scuba diving trip in Thailand a couple months ago we could position the router slightly outside our hotel room to be able to be able to strongly connect to the very dodgy hotel wifi so my girlfriend could do her work calls. It would also automatically log into the captive wifi which seemed to require a login every hour or so. Another time we Ethernet into it using the cable in another hotel to bypass some ridiculous speed limitations on their access point. I'm considering getting their model which can take SIM cards, so that we can also failover to mobile networks wherever we are.
tomjen3 9mo ago
I am apparently dumb. What benefit does this give you, other than a segregated network? Do us hotels typically have exposed Ethernet ports?
- eliseumds 9mo ago
  I always travel with my GL.iNet GL-MT3000 (Beryl AX) and this is what I use it for: - My wife and I travel with multiple devices (laptops, phones, Chromecast...) and when we get to a hotel/Airbnb, I simply connect my Beryl AX to their network (it deals with captive portals btw) and all of our devices automatically connect. - I changed the `/etc/hosts` directly in the router, meaning I can test my local servers under custom domains easily on my other devices like phones/tablets without apps like SquidMan. - I route specific domains through specific VPNs. Government websites, streaming websites, AWS services, etc. - I can plug in a 4G USB modem into it and it can automatically fallback to it if the main connection drops. - It has built-in Tailscale support.
forinti 9mo ago
I really like my GLi microrouter. https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-usb150/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-usb150/ I bought it for my vacations, so I wouldn't have to configure my kid's gadgets, but it is really useful as a wifi adaptor too. And you can run it from a powerbank.
hk1337 9mo ago
I was thinking of using that in combination with Beelink ME Mini N150 with proxmox installed on it and host different net tools, git, etc that’s available on the go. I might be overthinking the setup
RyJones 9mo ago
I carry my GL.iNet GL-E750V2 all over the world.
dwardu 9mo ago
Is there a 5g dongle I can connect to it? I’ve been searching to no avail
dionian 9mo ago
should I be concerned this is Chinese-made? And will the UniFi have similar feature set?

cromka 9mo ago

This is brilliant, actually very innovative product by Unifi. It's interesting because it seems they do what Apple does: they can add new products and features only because all the devices work together in an ecosystem.

libeclipse 9mo ago
Innovative how? Many travel routers already exist and support similar features
- cromka 9mo ago
  The way it automatically connects to your home and presents to your devices as part of your home WiFi. So you bring that device with you and everything else works like you're back home. I use OPNSense and OpenWRT myself and there's no way you can make travel routers this convenient with them.
  - walterbell 9mo ago
    > presents to your devices as part of your home WiFi That will be fun for browser geolocation based on WiFi name.
    - shermantanktop 9mo ago
      In a 1 bit environment (==single SSID visible), sure. But most of the time multiple SSIDs are visible, and correlate to each, making detection of abnormalities easier. And the lat/long is also visible to help disambiguate.
      - walterbell 9mo ago
        Would both the stationary and mobile instances of that SSID be visible on public databases like https://wigle.net https://wigle.net?
      - gruez 9mo ago

makestuff 9mo ago

It seems like the main feature is being able to access your home network to watch netflix, access LAN devices, etc. How is this different compared to running a tailscale exit node in your home network? Is the benefit of this that you have a hardware device that you can connect to instead of needing software like tailscale?

slig 9mo ago
I have a hard time believing anyone would actually use this versus self-hosting headscale in a discarded ThinkCentre and running it from a closet.
- nickt 9mo ago
  Not sure if you’re serious but reeks of “you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially”
  - slig 9mo ago
    Not serious, and you got it.
  - olalonde 9mo ago
    Obligatory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - fweimer 9mo ago
    But Unifi should be able to implement this with zero extra hardware, just with VPN-style clients on phones and laptops? I'm just surprised this needs an extra device. It would make sense if the device provided its own connectivity (with global wireless service, say), but this doesn't seem to be the case here. It still needs an uplink.
    - Polycryptus 9mo ago
      That's already an option, too.

syntaxing 9mo ago

I really like “bring your home everywhere aspect”. I can be a pain connecting my whole family devices to another SSID. If it can do WiFi repeating (as in login to a single hotel account and stream to rest of device), I would absolutely get one. If not, GL inet is still the way to go

notyourwork 9mo ago
Can GL inet not do that? Genuinely asking.
- eps 9mo ago
  This Unifi device is primarily meant as an add-on to exising Unifi setups as it's all well integrated.
- tguvot 9mo ago
  can do it
- teeray 9mo ago
  Can confirm. It also has a mode to jump through the captive portal. I just set it up with the same SSID and PSK as my home wifi and everything we bring connects automatically. It also routes everything through Tailscale.
  - guiambros 9mo ago
    Yep, I have the same set up. Use GL router to connect to the hotel wifi, and all devices are automatically connected, without captive portal on each one. Added bonus that I can use tailscale on the GL router to route remote traffic through my tailnet -- including devices where I can't install tailscale client (e.g. corp laptop).
pyrolistical 9mo ago
? You just need to set it up once and devices will auto reconnect by default
9mo ago

saagarjha 9mo ago

Available December 29th: https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/utr https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/utr

nerdix 9mo ago
Wifi 5 for an $80 router in 2026 (I mean we're almost there) is pretty disappointing. I get that its mostly going to be used on crappy hotel networks and the crappy hotel network will often be the bottleneck but $80 looks to be roughly twice the price of the typical travel wifi 5 travel router, about equal to the price of a typical wifi 6 travel router, and only $30-40 cheaper than a typical wifi 7 travel router. I don't mind a unifi premium for the integration but they should at least have a $50 wifi 5 version and a $100 wifi 6 "pro" version
- novok 9mo ago
  I'd pay $30 for the software alone that actually works.
- j45 9mo ago
  It’s wifi 5 but the most interesting part is it uses 5w of power max, I thought it’d be more.
  - kstrauser 9mo ago
    That’s a lot of power for a radio you’re right next to. You don’t need 100W to stream Netflix.
    - j45 9mo ago
      Interesting, I was thinking of it more from a travel perspective of running it from a shared power supply or something but you make a valid point.
- hmottestad 9mo ago
  I didn’t think there was much point in WiFi 6 unless you go 6e and get the 6Ghz frequency?

allovertheworld 9mo ago

whats the point of this? I got wireguard on my phone connected to my home network (also unifi). If this device had a 5g sim slot, then I could see the point but it’s not that.

WillPostForFood 9mo ago
The main benefit of a travel router is creating a private network, and sharing a wifi connection. An iPhone can't do that, though Android phones can.
- hnburnsy 9mo ago
  Some third party WiFis limit the number of devices. This gets around that limit.
- girishso 9mo ago
  > though Android phones can Interesting, as someone who has always used iPhones, wouldn't mind getting an Android phone for this. Is there some app?
  - stuxnet79 9mo ago
    No it's provided as part of the Android OS. Very simple and intuitive to use and has been for the past 10 years since I started using it. The only thing that was annoying initially was that you couldn't pass through the WiFi that your phone is connected to but I think that was corrected in later versions of Android. For a time I was using one of my older Pixel phones as a WiFi extender to improve signal in my home's basement. Worked like a charm. I'm honestly surprised this isn't available on iOS.
- allovertheworld 9mo ago
  Sharing where? All my devices can connect directly thru to Wireguard vpn on my home network. Ipad, iphone, MBP, etc A 5g phone tethering to your Wireguard connected MBP beats this out of the water

cyberrock 9mo ago

I wish one of these devices would have an internal battery again like the old HooToo Tripmates. Using it with a power bank doesn't feel quite the same.

aspenmayer 9mo ago
GL-iNet’s Mudi product line has an internal battery and eSIM and physical SIM card support. Mudi V2: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e750/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e750/ They have an upcoming 5G NR WiFi 7 version: Mudi 7: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e5800/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e5800/
- Terretta 9mo ago
  Effectively nobody sells Wi-Fi 7 capable gear yet: https://www.rtings.com/router/learn/research/wifi-7-mlo https://www.rtings.com/router/learn/research/wifi-7-mlo

tonymet 9mo ago

I clone my home WiFi SSID with my travel router so when we arrive at the hotel all of our devices auto connect without having to configure the consent / captive WiFi screen. It’s also nice to control VPN and DNS from one place , in case the hotel is doing DNS or IP filtering. And quite a few hotels still offer wired Ethernet , which helps performance.

jasoncartwright 9mo ago
Hotel wifi is often hilariously slow compared to plugging my travel router into an in-room ethernet socket. From spotty <10mbps to often a full uncontended gigabit. Makes video conferencing and large downloads usable.
- forwardandback 9mo ago
  I hadn't considered this advantage. Hotel wifi is indeed often crappy.

GlenTheMachine 9mo ago

I travel internationally all the time. Someone tell me why I need this.

novok 9mo ago
You have a workplace that insists you are working from your home while you travel. It has limits, like the amazon hardware keypress thingy with north korea showed recently, but unless your working at superbigtech or defense contractor it would probably work.
aghilmort 9mo ago
connect screenless devices, e.g., Echo Dot extend weak wireless range in hotel screen share or network between multiple devices eg travel with two laptops and can virtual KVM only have to do the captive device on one - many hotels limit number of devices extra security buffer phone can't bridge wifi for headless like this etc etc
ssl-3 9mo ago
You don't need this. Strictly speaking, we don't need much. But a travel router can be nice to have. I bring some tech with me when I travel. Obviously a phone, but also a decent-sounding smart speaker with long battery life so I can hear some music of my choosing in decent fidelity without using Bluetooth [bonus: battery-backed alarm clock!], a laptop for computing, a streaming box for plugging into the TV, maybe some manner of SBC to futz with if I'm bored and can't sleep during downtime. All of this stuff really wants to have a [wifi] connection to a local area network, like it has when I'm at home. A travel router (this one, or something from any other vendor mentioned in these threads, or just about anything that can run openwrt well) solves that problem. All I have to do is get the router connected to the Internet however I do that (maybe there's ethernet, decent wifi, or maybe my phone hotspot or USB tethering is the order of the day), and then everything else Just Works as soon as it is unpacked and switched on. And it all works togetherly, on my own wireless LAN -- just as those things also work at home. Bonus nachos: With some manner of VPN like Tailscale configured in the router, or the automagic stuff this UBNT device is claimed to be able to do, a person can bring their home LAN with them, too -- without individual devices being configured to do that. I think travel routers are pretty great, myself. (But using Ubiquiti gear makes me feel filthy for reasons that I can't properly articulate, so I stick with things like Latvian-built Mikrotik hardware or something running OpenWRT for my own travel router uses.)

qgin 9mo ago

> Automatic handling of captive portal authentication Very curious about how they're pulling this off

varenc 9mo ago
Details are scarce right now, but they say that via the UniFi mobile you'll authenticate yourself onto the captive portal and the travel router will use that. Guessing it'll clone your phone's MAC?
hollow-moe 9mo ago
Don't need to do anything specific, doing this with my openwrt router in uni dorm. Router to upstream, phone to router, captive portal shows up on phone just have to login and all devices on router are logged in (and most importantly only count as 1 device)

bnc319 9mo ago

So… hear me out. Could I connect this to an airline’s paid in-flight WiFi network, and then broadcast an open network to effectively open up access to all other passengers for free? If enough WiFi pirates do this on flights perhaps it would kill paid WiFi entirely (just need enough Good Samaritans) (And yes I know there are other bypasses you can do like spoofing MAC addresses to get around some device count restrictions)

IncreasePosts 9mo ago
Maybe. And then get throttled or banned for using too much bandwidth. You don't need this product to do this though, you can do the same thing with a laptop and your phone
- ec109685 9mo ago
  They throttle.
gdw2 9mo ago
Android phones can share their wifi connection like this.
- jser 9mo ago
  I carry a burner Android just for this feature. Great for sharing with my iPhone and iPad on a flight.
- pityJuke 9mo ago
  Insane to me that Apple still does not support this.
  - xp84 9mo ago
    Not that surprising. Unless you’re going to sell access to that hotspot and give Apple a 30% cut, it really wouldn’t interest Tim Cook.
  - 9mo ago

baggy_trough 9mo ago

I need something like this to share a single wifi connection among devices on a cruise. I don't care about the home network access though. Any recommendations?

dxxvi 9mo ago
You can search for "travel router" on youtube, buy a router like in the videos and done. However, a lot of cruise ships forbid travel routers, so you might need to buy a router which you can take the antenna out (keep the router in one luggage, the antenna in another luggage :-) ). I never did that though.
libria 9mo ago
There are variants of this kind that double as and look like a battery charger (which you should claim) but can also repeat and NAT a wireless signal (which you should helpfully omit). Rumor says mudiv2 but I've never used that so can't confirm.

shmoogy 9mo ago

Wonder how this will work to connect into hotel networks - on my glinet I have to clone my iPhone MAC address so I basically have to connect to the WiFi, do the with authentication enter room number and last name, then disconnect and boot up the router. Is there a better way to get these connected to a WiFi for relaying where the Ethernet isn't an option?

raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
A $40 router with WiFi to WiFi bridge support like the TP-Link AC750. You connect the router to the captive network and you connect your phone to the router. Connect everything else to the router.
avidiax 9mo ago
I have a gl.Inet and it's very rare that I have to do anything special to get on a captive portal. I just connect to the travel router AP, then connect the travel router to the hotel's WiFi, and browse neverssl.com to get the captive portal.
bananadonkey 9mo ago
This new Unifi device supports captive portal authentication flows, so you don't need to do that whole shuffle. Source https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruv550at3k8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruv550at3k8

firecall 9mo ago

>while captive portal logins on hotel networks are handled quietly in the background. Anyone know how it automagically sorts out connecting to the hotel WiFi? Hotels often want some combination of my room number and surname I've found, or some combination of hotel name and floor password.

dingwallr 9mo ago
"To connect the UniFi Travel Router to a guest network, open the UniFi Mobile App and select a nearby wireless network. If the network has a captive portal, it will automatically forward to your mobile device for login." from the FAQ https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/utr https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/utr
- varenc 9mo ago
  It likely relies on the travel router cloning the MAC address of your phone or whatever you use to authenticate. That way the hotel just thinks the travel router is your phone.
  - dawnerd 9mo ago
    It’s also (I’d hope) modifying the ttl as that’s used to detect travel routers.
MobileVet 9mo ago
Took my PS5 Pro on a work trip. Was livid to find out the horrific 'browser' on the PS5 wasn't able to handle the captive portal login page. $700 gaming rig and it can't load a simple HTML page so I can enter my name and room number?! Ridiculous. Thought about it for a few minutes and realized that the portal was likely just doing mac filtering. So I adjusted my MacBook Pro's MAC address to be the same as the PS5, went through the portal login and then powered down the MBP. Booted up the PS5 and I was online. Damn it feels good to be a gangster.
- avhception 9mo ago

JSR_FDED 9mo ago

Related, the GLiNet Comet (remote KVM) are also excellent. Have bought one for every elderly family member so I can support them more easily.

omnibrain 9mo ago
How does it compare to the PiKVM?
- forbiddenlake 9mo ago
  Much less expensive (barring diy and print-a-case-yourself), and most importantly to certain people, easily available in the US from Amazon. (Jetkvm also suffers from unclear import costs and delays)
yjftsjthsd-h 9mo ago
Oh, that's tempting. Is there vanilla openwrt or any other all-FOSS firmware for it? I'm rather paranoid about this kind of appliance.
redrove 9mo ago
This would’ve been great 15y ago, but today they all want help on their phone and there’s no good way of doing that.

DetectDefect 9mo ago

Have Ubiquiti/Unifi firmware/devices ever been subject to independent, third-party security testing? Surely a company charging such a premium for high-end devices has invested in such processes and is proud to showcase them ...

ec109685 9mo ago
You should overlay something else rather than rely on WiFi securiry. Tailscale or a vpn, private cloud or just tls, depending on your threat model.
- DetectDefect 9mo ago
  None of those would not prevent someone owning your device because the firmware has vulnerabilities.
NoiseBert69 9mo ago
As much I love Unifi products I dislike their privacy policy: > Usage Data. We may collect certain information about your devices, your network, your system and third party devices connected to your network or system when you use the Services ("Usage Data"), including but not limited to device data, performance data, sensor data, motion data, temperature data, power usage data, device signals, device parameters, device identifiers that may uniquely identify the devices, including mobile devices, web request, Internet Protocol address, location information (including latitude and longitude), browser type, browser language, referring/exit pages and URLs, platform type, the date and time of your request, and one or more cookies, web beacons and JavaScript that may uniquely identify your devices or browser. https://www.ui.com/legal/privacypolicy/#c1 https://www.ui.com/legal/privacypolicy/#c1
- ramzez 9mo ago
  you can disable it in settings https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042384093-Analytics-Data-Collection-FAQ https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042384093-Analytics...

FrameworkFred 9mo ago

To all the commenters who asked if it's worth it? IMO it's super worth it if you have more than one wifi access point and it gets more and more worth it as your network gets more complicated. I upgraded to homogenous ubiquiti/unifi when I set up a point to multi-point on my farm because I thought it would make that part easier. Surprisingly, those links aren't really baked in to the rest of it, but the router and wifi antennas that I've installed around those links "just work" with a private, protected, and guest network. I used to have to update two different routers with the same SSID, username and password to make "hopping" from one to the next "seamless" and, now that I've got 8 wifi antennas in a mesh with a single UI to configure them all, I can't even imagine how I'd do it with the hodge-podge of gear I used to work with. And I'm probably going to buy a travel router, but I'm wondering, if I use it connect to the hotel wifi, will I be able to use the thing as a wifi hotspot as well or do I have to use an ethernet point because the wifi is "taken"?

nixgeek 9mo ago
You can connect a UTR to the hotel network, and also connect your devices via WiFi to it; works just like GL.iNet's Slate 7 in this regard.

jbverschoor 9mo ago

Oh I thought one with 5g cellular connectivity

donkeylazy456 9mo ago

it says travel but not supporting LTE/5G

ec109685 9mo ago
Travel to a hotel.
allovertheworld 9mo ago
Yea if this had 5g it would be worth it
- idoescompooters 9mo ago
  Yeah you're not gonna get a cellular modem under $100 USD. Sorry

darkreader 9mo ago

[dead]

dawnerd 9mo ago

Really wish their press Release / marketing want obviously llm generated. Im their target audience for sure but I’m not sure I need all of the same features my home network has. Really my travel router is just used to share a paid connection and run AdGuard network wide.

fnord77 9mo ago

I don't understand this post. Is it an ad? I have wireguard running on my home router. Why do I need a piece of hardware when my laptop already can connect to it from anywhere?

NoiseBert69 9mo ago
I've been to many hotels/apartments where you have to place the router on a very specific location because the Wifi/4G/5G coverage is super bad. With Teltonica/GL.Inet you also can use small external antennas. Getting behind windows is often enough.
allovertheworld 9mo ago
This is for those not aware of that setup lmao

system2 9mo ago

The page doesn't even have a buy button. Why?

zer0x4d 9mo ago
UniFi website and marketing is just really really bad. They have amazing products but for some reason they don't really care about consumers and don't really know how to market to consumers. Just look at their website, it's impossible to find anything other than some super super specific networking stuff that you probably need a CCNP to even begin to understand
jasoncartwright 9mo ago
Because it's not available until the 29th

apexalpha 9mo ago

Does this also bridge L2 stuff so I am actually on my LAN? Otherwise I don't really see the point to carry a specific hotspot device when my phone has one built in.

easyKL 9mo ago

Please also consider the GL-iNEt Puli (XE300): - 5V 2A USB C connector and a 5000mAh battery - SIM and [not tested by myself] eSIM support. - Tailscale and Nebula available as a plug-in. - Main network and guest network can be set. - OpenWRT if you want the GL-iNET firmware.

jagermo 9mo ago
I am running a Netgear Nighthawk when I am on the road. But the Mubi7 looks interesting - I would not want to go back from 5G to a slower networks, sorry :)
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

Brajeshwar 9mo ago

This is brilliant, especially if you are already invested in the Ubiquiti/UniFi Ecosystem. There was a UniFi Teleport, and I think that function is now part of this Travel Router. From the video and the images, I believe this can also be added to a car act as a family wi-fi on the move. I’ve always had a Pocket Travel Router (along with a thin but long enough RJ45 cable) with me while traveling, starting with the D-Link AC750 Travel Router. It does away with Wi-Fi Change, and all of your devices just continue to work, no worry about syncing, file-transfers, etc. A travel router becomes even more convenient when traveling with the family.

frugalmail 9mo ago

It reads "Tethered 5G", why would a high-end travel router not support sim/e-sims directly?!

oseityphelysiol 9mo ago
79$ is not “high end”. 5G enabled router would cost twice as much - for a feature that not everybody will need.
StrLght 9mo ago
Why would it? 5G modems are expensive. GL.iNet makes something like that, Puli AX — it usually goes for around $350 [1]. [1]: https://store.gl-inet.com/products/puli-ax-xe3000-wi-fi-6-5g-cellular-router-with-battery/ https://store.gl-inet.com/products/puli-ax-xe3000-wi-fi-6-5g...

matt-p 9mo ago

I never really understand why you'd rather have one of these over just enabling "hotspot" on your phone. Ethernet is the only reason I can think of

stavros 9mo ago
If you have an Android phone you can connect a USB-C to Ethernet dongle (the same one as you have for your laptop) and get tethering via Ethernet out of it. It works really well.
chrisan 9mo ago
we take a webcam to keep eye on dogs sometimes. I use a travel router for that
- matt-p 9mo ago
  This is a really fair example.
barrkel 9mo ago
What if you want your kid(s) and/or partner(s) to stay connected after you leave the hotel room with your phone? What if you want to use the hotel's internet connection instead of your roaming data? What if you want to use wireguard or tailscale to funnel all traffic through your home network? What if you want to enable your family's devices to connect to your self-hosted services?
- apexalpha 9mo ago
  1. Fair enough. 2. Most Android phones can do this. 3. Android phones can do this. 4. This is just the same question as 3.
  - Moldoteck 9mo ago
    2 - without prior config only a bunch can do it, like pixels 3 - there's a difference - you can configure wg/ts on a single device(router) and it's done, or you need to do it on 5X+ devices, phones and laptops and fix the configs on all if something changes

barrkel 9mo ago

Tailscale? (I don't think it does) WAN connectivity via USB tethering and ethernet, not just wifi? The blog has almost no details, but the product page is also pretty light on technical details. The competition (I use GL-MT3000) is pretty strong.

dzikimarian 9mo ago
It makes more sense if you are used to Ubiquiti ecosystem. Basically they assume you have Ubiquiti-based home/office network (they call it site). Then this device binds to this site and VPNs to it over Teleport (kinda similar thing to Tailscale, also built on top of wireguard). I would assume you can also configure Wireguard/Open VPN/IPsec manually as this is pretty standard in their ecosystem. I guess it's nice if you are in Ubiquiti ecosystem already and want as little friction as possible. Otherwise it's probably similar to any travel router.

mariopt 9mo ago

This won’t replace my GL-AXT1800 which offers a lot more flexibility. Unifi shipping without eSIM support is a big mistake imo. I don’t want to have a 5g router(which are insanely expensive) or a second smartphone with 5G.

dfc 9mo ago
It doesn't have a modem. Why would it support eSIM?
- mariopt 9mo ago
  It would be super convenient, given it's size, for me to purchase a eSim card abroad with unlimited data and not having to drain my phone battery. This is a travel router.
  - dfc 9mo ago
    This is a travel router without a modem. It would be super inconvenient if you bought an eSIM for a device that does not have a modem. You might as well by an eSIM for your toothbrush when you are traveling abroad, it would equally "convenient."

QuiEgo 9mo ago

When I travel, I like carrying as little as possible. These comments are fascinating to me, people are brining more devices than I have in my whole house and needing to make a LAN for them. Personally I just connect my phone to WiFi and then use Tailscale and call it a day.

apexalpha 9mo ago
Some people spend 100+ days a year in hotels.
- bicx 9mo ago
  I spent about 30 days this year in hotels and don't envy these people at all.
  - wasmainiac 9mo ago
    Yeah same. It is borring, yet unfamiliar enough to chill. Same thing kind of applies to eating out for every meal.
- itake 9mo ago
  I spend about 200 days in hotels and I don’t want the extra weight or deal with dns/paywall issues
- QuiEgo 9mo ago
  I did 82 days last year. Everyone travels different, but for me I feel like any time I spend watching TV in the hotel is wasted time - I'm in a whole other city, surely there's something I can do? The hotel is just somewhere to take a shower and sleep. I don't watch much TV in general though so I guess it's easier for me.
  - massysett 9mo ago
    If I'm traveling for work, I'm working all day. At the end of the day I often just want to rest in the hotel room, especially if I take my dinner in a restaurant. Typically I don't watch the hotel TV though, as I don't want to figure out what channels are on it and I probably wouldn't want to watch them anyway. If I watch anything it will be on my iPad.

seemaze 9mo ago

I built my Unifi system around my Tailscale network, so I get basically the same benefits for free. I guess you either put in the admin effort up front, or pay the appliance tax on the back. What am I missing?

jimmydoe 9mo ago

$79 is over priced, get a GL.iNet Or just go Tailscale

jibe 9mo ago
$79 is so cheap that if it saves you 5 min in setup it pays for the difference to a GL.iNet/tailscale setup.
- jimmydoe 9mo ago
  as a frequent traveler, most of my setup time were spent on captive portal. so unless Unifi changes that dramatically, otherwise the time cost is more of less the same.

jackhuman 9mo ago

I’ve been using a travel router with a battery last few years, so if I get internet on a plane, all of our devices get online access vs just one single phone.

fmajid 9mo ago

I used to have a UniFi gateway for the nice traffic visualization but Ubiquiti lost my trust when they started running telemetry without consent and I’ve gone back to an OpenBSD’s box as router, thus this device does little for me. I’m looking forward to the GL.Inet MUDI 7, their first 5G hotspot, which should be running an open-source and hackable OS unlike most hotspots: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e5800/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-e5800/

jtokoph 9mo ago
I’ve been waiting for one of these with built in eSIM support
- jpgvm 9mo ago
  This one has eSIM and dual physical SIM support.
  - mootothemax 9mo ago
    I’m really struggling to understand the SIM side, the page talks about 5G while tethered to a phone?
    - vsviridov 9mo ago
      I think these models can act as router while leveraging RNDIS tethering if you don't have a separate sim card...
      - mootothemax 9mo ago
        Zero mention of anything other than WiFi on its tech specs page :-/ https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-wifi/products/utr https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-wifi/products/utr
  - InTheArena 9mo ago
    This is incorrect. No sim support here, and no cellular modem either :-)

natbobc 9mo ago

If this has a wifi antenna port would be very useful for marina wifi if you’re sailing around.

smileybarry 9mo ago

All the videos I've seen show it adopted by an existing UniFi site, I wonder if I can still set it up as a standalone device? Hopefully even set up the VPN functionality to some WireGuard server (which was implied somewhere where it listed OpenVPN & WireGuard, can't find it now).

InTheArena 9mo ago
You’re probably better off getting a GL device. They already have support.

yoan9224 9mo ago

been using a gl.inet axt1800 for travel and it's been amazing. mainly for hotel wifi where you can login once and all your devices connect automatically. curious how this compares - the unifi ecosystem integration could be nice but gl.inet is way more hackable

forwardandback 9mo ago

If I want to run NixOS on a cheap travel router, what are my best options? Ideally mainline Linux support.

forwardandback 9mo ago
Brief research suggests one of the NanoPis.