Travel router with wireless to wireless bridge capability

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi!

I want to buy a travel router that will allow me to VPN to my home network.
I would love to have one device that will do a wireless-to-wireless bridge so I can use it on hotel networks. GL-iNet has device like this (Slate AX), but there are many controversial opinions on this company and there is no OpenWRT firmware yet, so I was thinking about buying a different device and just install OpenWRT myself.

Any recommendations?
Thank you!

2

something with two radios, which most devices have.

3

So it will ie. connect as a client on 2.4GHz and be a access point on 5Ghz?
it would be cool to have 2x 5GHz. Maybe I should build a router on a Raspberry Pi 4 + a USB WiFi dongle?

4

(FYI, the two wireless will not "bridge" - that was a proprietary Broadcom functionality.)

You can relayd or connect downstream like a WWAN.

Yep. You can also make a second SSID and offer a LAN on the 2.4 GHz.

5

I am usually uploading big video files as backup so I'm concerned that 2.4GHz will limit the transmission. What do you think about Raspberry Pi 4 + Alfa AWUS036ACM WiFi USB Adapter ?

6

sure, but I've never stayed at a hotel, where the internet access would saturate a 802.1n link.

read https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi

2 Likes
7

I have the TP-Link TL-WR902AC which as 2 radios (2.4G + 5G), and it is well supported by OpenWrt. There are a large number of GL-iNet devices that are also supported (even if the specific one you're looking at is not).

Many of these devices do support simultaneous AP + sta mode operation, so even if you've got just a single radio, it is still possible to do what you want (with two caveats, below). But it's best if you can use a dual radio device.

You'll assign one radio to operate as sta mode and that will be linked with a wan (often setup as "wwan") interface. The new wwan interface will be, in turn, associated with the wan firewall zone.

The other radio will be configured against your lan interface (and lan firewall zone) for all of your local devices. Install a VPN (such as WireGuard) and have it tunnel home... you'll be all set.

Single radio caveats (applies to dual radio devices when using one radio as sta+AP):

  1. This negatively affects throughput. But that may not be a huge issue if you're using hotel/public wifi where the bandwidth may not be that great to begin with.
  2. AP+sta mode setups require that the channel be dictated by the sta mode connection. The consequence of this is that the AP mode will not start (at all) if the connection to the upstream SSID cannot be made (such as a stale entry in the wireless file). There is a solution for this: Travelmate