Comment by theoreticalmal

13 hours ago

What is the benefit of this over, for example, an iPhone hotspot?

Run one wireguard server in your home and one client instance on this router and now all of your devices can share the same residential VPN connection. No fraud blocks or extra verifications from your banking apps, no million suspicious login detected from all your social accounts, use your home netflix account, etc. All without your individual devices running a VPN app.

  • > Run one wireguard server in your home and one client instance on this router and now all of your devices can share the same residential VPN connection.

    You don't need a "travel router" for this. My phone is permanently connected to my server via Wireguard (so that I can access my files from anywhere). Adding another device just requires adding a peer in the server's config file and can be accomplished very quickly. It's not clear what problem the travel router solves, unless perhaps you travel with dozens of devices.

    > no million suspicious login detected from all your social accounts,

    I can personally do without those.

    • Your comment explains why we want a travel router. I have a wire guard setup for my servers. I'm entirely comfortable with setting that up.

      But I value my time enough that I don't want the hassle of that for the various devices my family uses when I can just preconfigure and plug in a tiny device and not have them depend on me being in the same location all the time.

    • > Adding another device just requires adding a peer in the server's config file and can be accomplished very quickly

      Do you need a client to be running on each device?

      Even regardless "I just need to edit a config file real quick" is... Way more work than I want to do. Works for someone on hn but I'm imagining trying to show my dad how to do that.

      That's the benefit of a travel router.

An iPhone can't bridge a wifi network. So you need something like a travel router to share a wifi connection.

  • They're suggesting just running off your data plan which works for domestic travel (at least to urban areas with good cell service) and can work for international if you go through getting a data eSim.

chromecast - godsend on long hotel stays. need to dial in through my home (wireguard) so no license issues with streamers and once I connect my GL.iNet GL-MT300N-V2 to hotel wifi instant bubble of safe wifi for all my devices! weighs nothing, been using for 8 years rock solid.

If you’re using a VPN: iPhone won’t route hotspot clients over the VPN, so you need to set up VPN on all clients.

You can control it from the ground up, including installing alternate firmware. You can also use VPNs etc.