GL.iNet - GL-A1300 Slate Plus

Agree 1000%. I use the same router to work in my van outside of work. Was a game changer in getting legit speeds but also maintaining a stable connection. I also have dropped it like 300 times and it still is humming along. Worth every penny.

No love for the A1300 (Slate Plus) 😢 I get why no love for Slate AX & 7 for vanilla OpenWRT, but the IPQ40xx is well supported and I’d take it over the MT1300 anyday. Only change I’d make to your list as I’ve got an A1300 & TR3000 myself.

I run a SFF PC and a Mac Studio in my van so getting Wifi is extremely important to me. This is the **GL.iNet GL-A1300 (Slate Plus) travel router**, it was the only small USB powered and energy efficient dual band router as i want to capture faster speeds on the 5Ghz band instead of being relegated to 2.4Ghz while it has better occlusion penetration its terrible when you are inside a metal box (van). So i ordered the **2x Panel Mount SMA Female To uFL/u.FL/IPX/IPEX Cable Connector** on Ebay for 4.50 USD. Pulled the router apart and attached the two new SMA connectors. This allows me to run coax cable to monster dual band antenna on the roof of the van. I connect to the router with my PC, phone, Mac etc and login into the settings and search for nearby wifi i want to grab. I then connect to it and rebroadcast a new wifi inside my van or use ethernet to feed the internet to my device. Im pulling huge speeds and distances using this setup. You could use this if you had the wifi password to a friends home, workplace, cafe, public network and parked nearby. Its completely stealth as you can hide the rebroadcasted wifi in the van and obviously password protect it or switch it off and run an ethernet cable. Total cost about 200 USD but honestly i would pay 5x that to have these internet speeds in my van. Hope this sparks an idea because i know internet is a sore spot for a lot of us.

Nice! I’m surprised more people don’t realise how ridiculously good this kind of setup is.

[https://a.co/d/7lWsTK4](https://a.co/d/7lWsTK4) Connect this one up to the pi, the smaller one is for portable units. I’m getting little over 1200 feet between ground units with just those 300s in heavily vegetated area with lots of obstructions . Still testing different antennas. Also placing one on a drone will greatly increase range.

I’m currently using a Glinet Slate Plus during my vacation, which is more than sufficient for our specific use case. I’m utilizing the built-in Tailscale client to access ad-free DNS provided by my own home network.

I have an older Slate and use it as my travel router. It can connect to my FWG with no issues over wireguard. The FWG applies all of the normal security rules to the traffic, just like being at home.  I personally prefer the Slate for travel and would highly recommend it.  On a side note, I have had issues with some places not allowing VPN traffic, including OpenVPN on port 443. So, in a situation like that, the Purple would be better as it can apply all of the proper network security measures on its own.

I use my GL routers while traveling and then use them to combine multiple devices to phone home via wireguard, no issues in any aspect. I view them as different use cases for me personally. I wouldnt mind the loss of a Slate/Beryl/Mango as a Firewalla given the different functions. Also I generally like having the extra lan ports on the GL Routers at some locations... Added, this is for trading situations where I hard wire 2 laptops I use in trading for and use a 3 port router.

I have found zero drawbacks to using my Slate as a travel router. I bought it for exactly that purpose. I almost bought another one to replace the Flint I had to repurpose elsewhere. The Slate is awesome for connecting to hotel captive portals, or using my phone connection (tethered with USB, it charges the phone too!). What I've most recently is use it to provide connectivity to my spouse's festival booth. Open wifi signal showing 1 bar that would never actually give me an IP on my phone, and the Slate grabbed it, and gave me a steady/fast signal that covered me all the way across the festival grounds to the food trucks. I've got a 5K battery that will keep it powered for an hour or so, but that was just to see 'how long'. For a real job like that, I'd bring my EcoFlow (because the register and everything else would need power too).

Yes to both. [One of these](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NR1SPBV). Slate's power port is USB-C. My only disappointment with this is that the battery doesn't work like a UPS. If using it connected to the mains, and the power drops, the battery is not engaged quickly enough to keep anything connected to it from losing power. The Slate is rated to draw 5V at 4A. At "full bore", this would take around 75min in ideal conditions to use up 5000 mAh. Consider that 5000 milliamps is 5 amps.

I would say unless you have a need to do site-to-site VPN that two-way communication between your home and away devices, the purple is an overkill as a travel router. If you just need one-way, like VPN to home to watch streaming media or send a print job to home printer, a Slate can fully do the job, and is much cheaper. And I do not think the wifi capability of the purple is as good as Slate.

How small you wanna go? Look at Gli-net's travel routers. I carry one in my luggage and they're great.

How small you wanna go? Look at Gli-net's travel routers. I carry one in my luggage and they're great.

1. I got into self hosting because I was tired of paying for services that never quite delivered how I wanted and stopped working if my internet did. 2. I travel enough that I frequently use an older Gl.Net router to provide some protection and get more of my devices connected if I have to pay for a connection. I have also been wanting a KVM for my home server so I can better administer it from afar. In particular one that might let me restart or power it up with button presses or a jumper interface. 3.I learn a lot from Reddit, but probably most from encountering a problem and researching it until I find a solution that suits my needs and capabilities. That research takes me everywhere… but mostly Reddit these days. 4. I’d love a lower-power feature rich NAS. I consult for a lot of friends and families, and these have become a popular request. Ugreen might have the best offering for now, but I do feel like there’s still room for improvement. Edit: Products I’d choose if I won would be the POE KVM and travel router.

Most “normal” routers cannot use an existing wifi network as their WAN. GL.iNet is really best in class when it comes to this.

Agreed, I have their $37 travel router and it would work great for 700 square feet, hell, it stays connected a long way away. I had it set up in my 4th floor hotel room in Jamaica and was still connected at the pool outside.

I think this is a great use case for a Gl.inet travel router. It doesn't sound like your mother in law is really in need of super download speeds, so the 36MB free wifi should be more than enough. So connect the travel router to the free wifi and then everything in her trailer to that travel router. The travel router will hide all her internal devices like the printer and chromecast. Really, if you think about it, the trailer park is not all that differant than say a hotel, but instead of hotel rooms all connecting to one public wifi you have trailers connecting to one public wifi. no differant. so perfect for a travel router. I think this would be easier to maintain and configure over a normal router. Sure a normal router can be configured to act as a bridge, but why bother with having to figure out how to do that on the normal router when the travel routers already have all that functionality build right into it and are designed for that right out of the box. Plus a Gl.inet router is < 100 bucks, no. If you were to go with the 20 buck a month solution from the service provider after 5 months you would be spending more than just buying a travel router.

I love their products, I have one of their travel routers and it’s extremely handy.

GL.inet for sure. Easy.

I think any of their currently listed travel routers will run tailscale.

The last time I had gone on a cruise they didn't say anything about the gl inet travel router I had with me. Anyone with a small one been caught with one yet? Just curious about how often those small ones have been noticed

If you have a small enough apartment, travel routers (like the GL.iNet ones) are designed for this use case - connecting to a WiFi network like a hotel network and then rebroadcasting your own.

Correct. You don't want any routing. You want the clients to pick the closest network. Even something as small as a Gl.Inet Travel Router will do the job, because you turn it to "AP" mode so it doesn't really do much.

Correct. You don't want any routing. You want the clients to pick the closest network. Even something as small as a Gl.Inet Travel Router will do the job, because you turn it to "AP" mode so it doesn't really do much.

As someone who just got done traveling to multiple places and staying for a week at those places, trying out a couple different travel routers at each place (GL iNet & Asus Go), I like the Asus the best. I love the form factor of the GL iNet, but after 6 hours or so it disconnected. I had to unplug it and plug it back in. Google mentioned something about the WAN settings (I’d have to find it). Whereas the Asus just worked. It never disconnected, worked fine in WISP mode and just regular eithernet. So now my go to is the Asus Go for my travel router.

Hi, I hade similar problem, I used Mikrotik than Ubiquity Edge X, but half year ago I have found GLI.net It’s OpenWRT by default and it cost similar to TP-Link. It have WireGuard, Tailscale and AddGuard as native app ;)

Exactly. Don't waste money on these shitty consumer routers. The only decent ones are from gl.inet that come with openwrt. If you need more, look into opnsense on something like qotom or other minipc, mikrotik, ubiquity and separate access points.

Poor performance, very poor routing performance. And overpriced.