Since it is a bridge, your laptop gets its own IP address in the 172. range and logs into the hotel network under its IP/MAC address. Since you never open the registration page from the IP/MAC address of the router, it is not logged in, and the router has no Internet access.
In other words it is working like you had an Ethernet switch, with the laptop as one user and the router as another.
If you route instead of bridge, the hotel always sees the MAC address of the router for all your connections. So after you log in on the laptop, the router will also have access.
So you should set up a WAN network which is a DHCP client and attached to the Ethernet port. Set the LAN back to a private network and have a firewall rule to forward from LAN to WAN.
You could manually download the Luci packages to your laptop, transfer to LEDE /tmp directory and install with opkg.
Once running as a router, any device connecting on your wifi will appear to the hotel router with the mac of your router. Log in on one device eg your laptop, and your router will be logged in, not the laptop. This means any device using your wifi will be logged in too. You do not need LEDE to do this specially, or spoof mac addresses, it will just work.
Can you give me some more details on that, point me to a page or some sample configs? I tried to do this yesterday, but the way I did it I kept losing access to the router and had to boot in fallback mode to undo the changes. Thanks!
I don't think this works, that should have even worked with the factory firmware, but router was not able to connect to internet when connected via wifi. I read on some pages that Mac spoofing is the way to go, and even that doesn't always work in hotels. Hotels really don't want you to setup your own wifi.
Ethernet from hotel to your router, wifi from your router (with totally different ip address range) DOES work out of the box with no need for mac address spoofing. I do this all the time.
I am not familiar with the TL-WR902AC, but any "Travel Router" will do. I use a GL-iNET MT300N v1 with no problems at all on any hotspot network either ethernet to the hotel or in WISP mode. Login only required on one device, all the others on your wifi will then have access.
Yeah, TL-WR902AC doesn't work like that. Wisp got stuck in init, that's why I installed lede. I got the TL-WR902AC because i wanted AC, but maybe I should get the GL-iNET MT300N instead.
Well, the MT300N v1 should just work straight out of the box for the scenario you are in at the moment.
It runs a custom version of OpenWrt CC. It is a very high quality device that I have developed a custom version of LEDE for so I know it very well. I am sure the TL-WR902AC can do the same one way or another or it would not be marketed as a Travel Router.
@konradsa - I have been using a TL-MR3020 in a similar context and most recently picked up and started playing with the TL-WR902AC. They both work well with LEDE, but it can be tricky to setup the networking, especially without LuCI installed. And getting LuCI installed presents a bit of a challenge if you can't get the networking setup properly.
Ultimately, what you need is to define a wan interface. You can use the eth0 interface as long as you remove it from the lan configuration. Set the proto of the wan to dhcp.
looks like you already have the wifi setup and enabled, so make sure you can connect to the router via wifi from your computer/phone that you're using before you restart the network stack (else you may loose connectivity).
Once that is done, you can restart the networking stack (/etc/intit.d/network restart). When it comes back up, the ethernet port should be active as a wan port.
Now you can do opkg update and opkg install luci.
I've also been able to configure a WISP like scenario where I define a wwan interface that can connect to an upstream wifi AP while simultaneously creating a wlan for my own devices. There is one big complication, though -- if the MR3020/WR902AC cannot connect as a client to the upstream AP (for example: incorrect SSID or password, not available, etc.), the radio will stall out and your devices will not be able to connect to it. This is a radio chipset limitation, as far as I can tell. The good news is that the 902AC 2G and 5G radios operate independently. I use the slide switch to determine the boot mode, and I have setup one position to reset the network to a known/safe state (i.e. restore the wireless and network files with copies that have the upstream connection disabled and cleared).
I have another single port device (HooToo TM-02) and from day one considered the single Ethernet port an issue. It defaults to LAN, which is appropriate, but if you reconfigure it to WAN and have an issue, then you may need to reset the device. The GL.inet and some others have both LAN and WAN Ethernet, and are much easier to use in the field.
The issue about loosing a STAtion killing access tot he AP is a MAJOR problem with travel routers and what ever device you use you should look at dirk's Travelmate as a possible solution. Having the dual radios probably will help you greatly. I owuld use the 5G for your AP and 2.4 to connect to STAtions (WISP).
While you can use the switch to load different configs, I have found that inevitably one (I) failed to keep the configs up to date.
I was able to install luci manually yesterday, and configure both Wifi and Ethernet bridge mode. I even got my VPN working and was streaming from my server at home to my chromecast in the hotel.
This setup wasn't a very good experience though, having a single Ethernet port only is definitely an issue. Is there another device you can recommend? Maybe I should get the GL-MT300N instead, although I kind of like having AC. Also I was not really happy with the vpn performance of the tplink, it seemed to max out fairly quickly.
Is there something considered the ultimate travel router you guys can recommend?
Having 2 ethernet ports -- dedicated LAN and WAN ports -- certainly makes many things easier, especially in the initial setup. But the radio issue (unable to connect as a client -- STAtion mode -- makes the radio hang) will almost certainly still be an issue when you are in a wireless-only context (i.e .traveling with phone/tablets and other systems that lack ethernet ports). As such, it is a good idea to have a method to gracefully reset the wireless (and general network) configuration to a known good state. This is why I use the slide switches on these routers to adjust the context (I use this as a travel router and a VPN endpoint to connect to my VPN at home):
Position 1: Reset wireless and network to a saved, known good configuration (my own baseline). WAN on eth0, normal firewall rules, disable auto-connect-on-boot for VPN.
Position 2: Connect to last known network (i.e. keep the most recent wireless and network settings).
Position 3: Connect to last known network, auto-connect VPN, adjust firewall to force all LAN traffic through the tunnel and disallow LAN > WAN traffic (prevents leaks if VPN is not connected).
I also use the WPS button to start/stop the VPN connection, and a long-press on the WPS button toggles the eth0 port between WAN and LAN.
The GL.inet routers are probably about as robust as you will get in a travel router for LEDE\OpenWrt. I do not expect more than low teens on OpenVPN from almost any device, but the hotel wifi is usually slower anyhow unless you pay the up charges.
If there is an Ethernet port available, I all ways use it, on both sides, so two is better. Having the LAN port generally lets you recover with out resetting, but you do need and Ethernet device (laptop as opposed to a tablet), but I always have one.
At this point I just use my phones hotspot over 4G for anything other than a hotel.
@RangerZ - I travel mostly with devices without ethernet (phone, MacBooks,Chromebooks, etc.) -- I could bring a USB-to-ethernet adapter with me when using a computer, but I typically don't worry about it since I have the boot mode switching.
I've been really happy with my MR3020 and WR902AC devices aside from the fact that they don't have 2 ethernet ports and are light on internal flash memory. I have heard great things about the GL.inet devices and they do make up for some of the TP-Link shortcomings.