GL.iNet - Slate 7 (GL-BE3600)

Not for good, look at Gl.inet if you want the most amazing and opensource routers, Flint 2, 3 and it's travel routers as slate 7, (look at them in YouTube) are at own level, better than Synology at each parameters, with extreme software capabilities, and easy to manage but not less powerful neither locked in anyway (os is an skin on too openwrt but also compatible with official openwrt releases), if you need sdwan, vpn-whatever (even tor), bland, multiple segregated networks etc is ts they right stuff, I'm very impressed (I come from Mikrotik).

Definitely GL-INET for travel. It just has a lot more versatility as it was designed specifically for that purpose.

But it will not have 2.5Gbps switchports and vlan tagging capability

Is use a ZTE MU5001 in conjuction with a GL.iNet GL-BE3600, best ping I've seen has been 12 (but on average it's 20) The MU5001 sometimes drop-out due to heat I think, when managing both 5G and WiFi connectivity, therefor I only use the MU5001 as WAN line-in to the GL.iNET. MU5001 is btw slow over USB. Max speed I've experienced is around 900 (I lived with direct 100m view to a 5G antennae from 4. floor with an external atennae pointed at it) I don't have direct line of sight anymore, and reach a max speed of 600. You can feel in FPS games it's a drawback, in comparison to fiber and coax, due to the latency being worse. For games such as league of legends and WoW, it's hard to notice the difference. So IMO its sufficient for casual gamers but not for competitive play. I use 5G cause I have an unlimited plan for 5-eur, which is a dope price for basically 500/100mbit internet in my country, and it has less downtime than fiber and coax. Great for casual gaming and no issues 4K streaming with stremio on my TV. Sorry for grave-digging a bit, but since no posts here had much of a real-life experience, I thought it was worth sharing if someone stumble upon your post.

Not too much difference in general throughput performance. Both the Slate 7 and the home routers (Flint 2/3) are quad-core CPUs, but if all you have is a small apartment and a few devices then the Slate 7 is perfectly fine. I'm using mine right now for 1 laptop (wired to LAN port of Slate 7) + 2 iPhones (one on MLO Wi-Fi and the other on 5G). CPU temp is around 73C and plenty of memory left. Flint 2 or Flint 3 will make more sense if you've got a bigger space. Because bigger antennas = better range.

The router is working quite flawless. I am using the device now for eight weeks and I am happy with it.

They are both pretty good. Purple has remote access out of the box with alerts and what not. GL.inet requires you to set up a vpn to do that. Some of the top end GL.inets have a bigger WiFi bubble that they create. I would love to find a small travel centric add on for the purple, that had a bigger coverage bubble. Or even a higher tier Firewalla box that could do that. Most hotel stays the purple is perfectly fine for coverage, but every so often we do a rental at the beach or something like that and it’s a bit of a crapshoot for coverage in the areas that you want.

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.

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.

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 ;)