GL-AR300M16-EXT

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

Great little travel router. I needed the Qualcomm chipset for open source OpenWrt. Using this for a mobile installation where I just need simple communications and not necessarily speed or form factor. This thing does the job reliably. Range is impressive. Single sign on for all devices in mobile situation and quick, reliable, easy wireless connection to WAN.

Always good, no 5ghz but very customizable with multiple 3rd party ,DDwrt ,OpenWRT ready to install firmware, capable of USB duel band/ 5ghz wifi USB adapter add on for multiple radios that help a lot when using Wifi Pineapple /clone firmware.

It works fine most of the time but for some reason I have to periodically power it off then back on to get the signal. I do use it continuously and every few days or weeks it will not connect to the Internet so I unplug the power and plug it in and it usually starts working. I have it tethered to a smart phone 100% of the time so it is possible the phone is the problem. Another case of good enough for me for the price.

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

I purchased this to replace a tplink extender that started flaking out. I had my doubts that this would work for me. I have this in my shop office which is a metal building. My home wifi is about 50-60 feet away. I needed an extender with a removable antenna that I can hook my outdoor antenna to. This works great ( so far anyway). Setup was very easy and it is only 2.4G but the download and upload speeds in the metal shop office are the same as in the house. This is the outdoor antenna that I use.https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZ7B46A?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_27which is unavailable now but anything with the same connector end would work. RP-SMA connectors on the unit.

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

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