Travel Wi-Fi Access Point?

[NickKz]

I'm looking for a good solution for using devices like Apple TV etc. when traveling, since they don't work with captive portal WI-Fi at all

 

The idea would be to have the travel Wi-Fi AP do the captive portal auth and then just have my all of my individual devices connect through that

 

It would be a double NAT, but I don't think that would really matter, I'm not running game servers or anything, plus I'd want to be able to use a VPN directly on the AP anyway

 

Being able to set up a VPN directly on the AP would be perfect too, that way I can also use individual devices that I have without having to individually configure them to use a VPN, and I won't have to worry about my devices that don't have VPN configs on them, like the Apple TV

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated, thank you!

[DrMacintosh]

8 minutes ago, NickKz said:

since they don't work with captive portal WI-Fi at all

Are you often traveling outside of your country? If not, why not add a cellular hotspot to your phone? 

 

 

[NickKz]

22 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Are you often traveling outside of your country? If not, why not add a cellular hotspot to your phone? 

 

 

Not traveling outside country...at least no plans to any time soon.  Maybe next year?

 

Problem with using phone as a hotspot is two issues.  

 

Firstly, you can't connect the phone to the hotel Wifi when it's sharing it's LTE/5G connection using the wifi radio.  At least my iPhone 13 pro can't do that, I'm fairly certain.  So the phone itself also must use the LTE/5G connection for all of its own data / apps.

 

IF the phone itself had dual band WiFi and could do 2.4 Ghz to the Hotel AP and then share that out of the 5Ghz to my other devices as a hotspot, that would be perfect.  But yeah I'm 99.9% certain iPhones aren't capable of this.  Maybe there are Android devices that are?  That's something to look into.  Wouldn't mind buying a refurb'd Android phone and using it like that.  

 

Quick google search -- looks like this IS possible on Android!  Neat.

 

Second issue though is speed, LTE/5G reception is usually pretty terrible inside hotels.  If it wasn't, I wouldn't mind doing it, but yeah I've tried and usually what happens is the speeds are so slow my Apple TV will just buffer eternally when trying to watch anything.

 

I think also there are problems with AirPlay to the ATV when using that setup, though it's been awhile since I've tried it.

[Takumidesh]

There are some travel routers out there that can run openWRT allowing for vpns and such. something like this maybe? there are of course a million different variations.

 

EDIT: the one i linked doesn't support 5ghz but there are plenty out there that do.

[Biohazard777]

1 hour ago, NickKz said:

Any suggestions would be appreciated, thank you!

GL.iNet as @Takumideshmentioned, they make some nice travel routers.
If you want WiFi 5: GL-A1300 (Slate Plus)

If you want WiFi 6: GL-AXT1800 (Slate AX) 

OpenVPN and WireGuard clients are supported.

For getting through captive portals you can check their docs: https://docs.gl-inet.com/en/4/tutorials/connect_to_a_hotspot_with_captive_portal/

[vmdyap2022]

Or you can build your own travel router using a raspberry pi, you can also install a 5G hat if you need to use a sim. One video guide I saw was made by Networkchuck on youtube, he shows how to install openwrt and adding vpn too. It includes connecting to a wifi captive portal as well.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 hours ago, Takumidesh said:

There are some travel routers out there that can run openWRT allowing for vpns and such. something like this maybe? there are of course a million different variations.

 

EDIT: the one i linked doesn't support 5ghz but there are plenty out there that do.

OpenWRT is a good way to this, done it myself for captive portals using one WiFi on the router as a client then a second as the Access Point.

 

However its worth noting you may technically be in breach of the terms of service of the hotel WiFi by doing this.

[NickKz]

Thanks everyone, I think I have enough resources from the posts to get started

I will update this thread when I decide which one to get, but the GL.iNet one with Wifi 6 looks pretty slick!  Has openWRT firmware!!