Opal (GL-SFT1200) Cost-Effective Pocket Router

I wish I could give this SIX stars. Not only is this a VERY CAPABLE portable router, it is a super-powerful, user friendly, intuitive, whole-home router. When I bought this, I was merely looking for something that would allow me to port forward through a VPN and over-come my mobile provider's unforgiving home internet hardware and configuration. Boy did I get my 40 bucks worth! Not only does it support OpenVPN from a gigantic line of VPN providers, you can manipulate virtually every single setting in the thing and it makes my cellular home internet viable for my home lab. The router interface itself is based on OpenWrt (a lightweight Linux distro for routers and things) and has been cultivated with both the novice, security conscious user AND the advanced, home-brew, hobbiest network engineer in mind. You can setup multiple VPN profile types to support all kinds of needs and quickly switch between them. Advanced ad blocking, interfaces with dynamic DNS services, advanced firwalling, distributed networks and VLANs, and basically anything else you can think of that you might need. I'll try using my phone to tether with it soon. Right now, I'm having too much fun with the available items that are just standard. Because its software is a lightweight Linux system, there are hundreds of installable packages for this. If you have experience working inside Debian, you can run this thing and make it as powerful or as ubiquitous as you want or need. I'm anxious to find out if I can connect external storage to it because it's only got 128 MBs of storage on board. Don't let the size and price point fool you. In experienced hands, this thing is a NetGear & TP-Link exterminator that will NOT bog down your network.

I have a different reason for wanting a wireless router like this than most people. I wanted something small that could fit in the back of my mixing rack for my bands gigs. This allow us to connect to the mixer using phones and tablets to control monitor mixes and the main mix. Easy to use as a bridge to connect to the house WiFi for internet access while keeping the mixer off of the WAN. Simple setup and flat out works. The VPN features are cool but I have no need for them in this situation so haven't played with them. For me it came down to format, feature, and cost factor. This scored high in all of those given my needs. I'll buy again as needs arise.

Small form factor, with a small case it doesn't take up much space in a case or bag. Range could span a few hotel rooms easy on high power, low power is enough for the room and into the hall. It connects via wifi, Ethernet, or a USB tethering. It has a built in OpenVPN and Wiregaurd client and a hardware switch to enable them, so you can tunnel traffic out of the shared upstream network. The interface is basic, but easy to use. You can use OpenWRT directly too if you prefer more advanced options. I've used this on trips for days and is more limited by the upstream hotel connection than this device. I've used it to stream movies, play games via Parsec and upload photos and videos without any issues.

Overall this is a handy device and an awesome value for the price. The hardware is lightweight, compact, and very easy to travel with. I bought the device primary to use as a travel NAS device, as I had loaded up multimedia on a 5TB USB hard drive that I wanted to share across multiple devices (tablets, phones, VR headset, etc.). It's impressive that this device is so configurable, virtually as comprehensive as my much more expensive Netgear Orbi home network gear. You need to be technically savvy in order to get the most of out of this device, though. As an engineer I actually think that it's pretty cool that this little $35 device has Open WRT installed, has SSH access, and has a whole bunch of settings you can tweak to exactly configure this router for your home or travel network. But I wouldn't buy this expecting complete plug-and-play usability except for the most basic features (sharing an internet connection). If you are technically adept and patient this won't be an issue, just be forewarned. NOTE that many of the advertised features are only available in the 3.x version of the firmware, such as file sharing and DLNA support. The router comes shipped with the 4.x version, which according the GL.iNet forums, had many of the features removed in the 4.x release in order to preserve disk space. So you will actually need to downgrade the device in order to get back the preinstalled functionality restored. The good news is that the user forums are actually quite active and the company and other users have been very responsive in answering various technical support questions. Technically, some of the removed functionality can be reinstalled on the 4.x firmware, but after some experimentation I could never get it quite right, so I decided that the downgrade route was a better option. On 3.x, the device works flawlessly and handily supported my use case with zero issues - it mounted the 5TB HDD fine, provided it enough power, and the SAMBA file sharing support was very stable.

Excelente! Muy bueno y práctico

When you travel and want a safe connection, or when the wifi you live is shared and want to protect yourself.. It sets up really simple and is stable and fast and offers so many add ons..

Świetny router, jak za tą cenę dobra wydajność i możliwość instalacji MQTT i innych pluginów

Ik heb het kort getest, want ik krijg het pas met kerst. Maar ziet er heel goed uit. Ik wil op vakantieverblijf gebruiken om meerdere apparaten over een wireguard tunnel naar mijn thuis internet verbinding te laten lopen. Mijn internetverbinding thuis is niet de snelste, dus deze goedkope variant is voor mij snel genoeg, en goedkoper dan een zelfgebouwde op basis van een raspberry pi. En deze werkt meteen.

Preisleistung unschlagbar, dieser frei konfigutierbare Router ist perfekt für WoWa Camper und Co. Fängt ohne Probleme das WLan vom CAmpingplatz etc. auf und stellt es, mit guter Sendeleistung, im WoWa, Camper, Zelt oder was auch immer bereit. VPN und CO machen das ganze auch sicher. Da schöne und Übersichtliche UI machen die Bedienung kinderleicht.