I am looking for something to fill the following scenarios in therms of Device A:
Laptop connects Ethernet to portable DeviceA (powered by the ethernet), Device A is then setup to connect to public wifi/hotspot (which can be authenticated and Un-authenticated hotspots which is typically web login/activation).
Similar to 1, Laptop connects Ethernet to portable DeviceA (powered by the ethernet), Device A is then setup to connect to simple portable mifi type device on wpa2 based authentication which breaks out via ceullar sim.
What would best be suited for Device A, should be light weight, small, original firmware or openwrt firmware (Preferred), firewall capabilities and should be able to cater for openvpn connectivity. Primarily powered via PoE or even USB but still have abaility to be powered by standard power adapter if stationary within office or home. Added bonus would be to allow other devices wifi connect to Device A.
I've never heard of a laptop which can output PoE.
Other than that detail, pocket routers such as those from HooToo or GL-Inet would be suitable. TP-Link also makes pocket routers but they have small memory chips. Make sure what you buy has at least 8/64 MB memory (flash/RAM).
Hi, I'd like to share my similar experience.
I have a tplink 720nv3 with extroot. It's a tiny traveling router. It can be AC or micro usb powered, however, if power source is the laptop, then the laptop has to support power on usb port even if no usb data connection is made.
Custom OpenWRT build containing extroot essentials, Package Travelmate with zram enabled has to be made. User also has to strip of luci to fit the tiny flash of this 432 device. IPV6 support (or anything you don't need or won't work well on the said device) may also need be disabled at compilation to save space for later gcc'ed 4.9 or 4.14 kernel.
Not bad experiences with a handful of low bandwidth devices connected.
But I am not sure if Openvpn can run on this tiny device with only 32 MB ram, even if zram support, or further swap support are enabled.
Such tiny wonder will easily complain OOM without zram when executing opkg update.
Hope it help.
I Live in hope. I do however have Power On USB, so this will probably need to be the power source.
I have already been looking at the gl-net's, they the size I am looking for. Not hear of hootoo, but a quick look also seem promising, will dig deeper on those.
Thats thing I need to be sure of before buying a unit, can the device ,by logging into the admin interface, facilitate the connection to the public wifi. Most public services I connect to are authenticated by web login linked to an account, from there it is usually just enabling the connection as I would have a registered mac address.
If you run a basic routed client, the hotel network will see only your router's MAC address, and assume all connections are coming from that. You would need to use one client to go to the captive portal page and log in-- since this actually logs in the router's MAC, all your other clients of that router will have Internet access.
Hello everybody!
I need a device like the one described in the first post
[Laptop] =Ethernet=> [DeviceA] -=-=WIFI-=-=> [Public Wifi/hotspot] >>>Internet
The signal should be accepted from a wifi hotspot and transferred to a laptop via LAN.
OpenVPN is not mandatory, just firewall would be enough. Are you familiar with any?
Most of the GL.iNet devices ship with the packages required to do this and an easy to use interface. The travelmate package can be added to other OpenWrt installs as a way to achieve you goals as well.
I would not purchase anything with less than 16 MB of flash and 128 MB of RAM at this time.
If you're going to buy something new, you might as well buy something that will be able to handle near-term Linux requirements. For devices with dual ath10k radios, that means at least 256 MB of memory, for others, at least 128 MB. Less than 16 MB of flash is limiting, but at least won't cause crashes under load and can be worked around in the future with USB or microSD cards.
I find the GL.iNet devices and their firmware to be of very good quality and robust. I've got their AR750S with me on travel right now and a couple others. Like any manufacturer, older designs get replaced by newer ones. The MiFi has already been replaced -- https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-x750/