Gl.iNet Opal any good?

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi everyone, I am absolutely new to the concept of travel routers. I stumbled across them when I hooked up my Chromecast at a hotel and noticed people trying to stream to it, even though I had set the chromecast up not to accept streams.

In a rush I bought the "Opal" (SFT1200) on Amazon but as I got more interested in upgrading it to use the Travelmate version of OpenWRT on it, I noticed it is not possible to upgrade this router with anything but the official Gl.iNet builds. For Opal these are based on a very old 18.x version of OpenWRT and Gl.iNet has no plans to change this.

How safe is it to use this router?

Further more, there hasn't been a new firmware release for it for some time now. I wonder if I will run into trouble over time connecting it to hotel wifi. If that happens I won't be able to update it to a newer version of OpenWRT which might be able to fix the problem.

Would returning it and for instance buying a Beryl be a much safer option or can anyone with more insight into security tell me if I am simply overthinking this?

2

it's not supported by openwrt, so you're asking in the wrong place.
try the gl.inet forums.

the Beryl is however supported here, but I think you're overthinking this :wink:

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3

Opal is cheap because of this reason, if you can return it, then do it.
The Beryl (both AC & AX), or Slate (Plus) are supported by OpenWrt, it's not just security reason now, if GL is not doing update then your Opal will never get any new feature.

4

In terms of security, how "bad" would it be to keep using an 18.x based router? Are there any well known problems with it security wise that have been fixed in a newer version?

Thinking about my own use case I would probably mostly use it for my Chromecast. The most sensitive (security wise) use it would get is when I order and pay for something on-line.

5

we can't answer any questions about gl.inet's openwrt, it's a black box to us.
again, wrong forum.

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6

Fine, in that case: any router on official openwrt 18.x? How safe is it to use?

7

it's not, but it was also EOL:ed a long time ago.

if you'd have a device with 18.x installed, the 1st advice you'd get, would be to upgrade, yesterday.

but you can't compare gl.inets 18.x with "our", whatever CVEs our openwrt might have, may or may not exist with gl.inet, and the other way around.

3 Likes
8

I highly doubt Gl.iNet development team patches any leaks.

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9

then you got your answer right there.

get something supported, unless you can live with the unpatched sec flaws.

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10

You might be right. Shame, the thing ticked many boxes. Plus it's cheap and small.

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11

I'm not certain but I think that model is EOL which would explain why there are no plans to produce a new firmware.

I would definitely send it back and get a Beryl MT1300 as it is mainstream mt7621 and fully supported by OpenWrt. I have a couple and can vouch for it.

2 Likes
12

From the Gl.iNet employee's post I've read that was published not very long after the release of the Opal, I gather they never had plans to update, just to get rid of most bugs and be done with it. I guess the Opal is not where the money is. It's their entry level model.

13

Would you go with the regular Beryl over the AX version?

14

AX version is better, while the AC one is also very good (I am using), both using Mediatek chipset and having full support from OpenWrt.

15

I have access to one but have not tried it yet so cannot vouch for it. I guess it is up to you.
+/-:
It is more expensive and probably uses a bit more power. Can your user devices take advantage of its potential? The build quality is what you would expect from GL-inet.
So...

16

I can actually get the mt3000 a little cheaper than the the 1300. I don't think I actually need the power of the 3000 but a little extra can't hurt.

17

I opened the box. It has a 2.5GHz ethernet wan port, but only has a single 1GHz lan port compared with the 1300's 1GHz wan and 2x 1GHz lan, so depends on your use case.

18

It's 2.5GbE + 1GbE port, for cable only you are correct that it doesn't have much difference than 1 GbE x 2, however you need to consider there is WiFi as well, assume you get ~1Gbps from WiFi (well I know it's too ideal, however for 2T2R WiFi6 160MHz this is easy for many normal routers), and then 1Gbps from cable, the WAN 2.5GbE will make more sense.

19

That's what I said. I was mostly comparing 2 ethernet ports vs. 3 ethernet ports between the two routers. The OP may not have realised the difference if it matters.

20

But if OP can get MT3000 at cheaper price, I don't see any reason not going for it.