What Configurations Should I Change When First Installing?

Installing and Using OpenWrt
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I recently received a gl.inet Beryl Ax travel router from a family member that is no longer using it. He's a tech savvy person and installed OpenWRT.

I plan to use this as a travel router to connect to public wifi occasionally at hotels and potentially even at home (as a second layer between myself and others using the home internet).

I'm brand new to OpenWRT. This was freshly installed before giving it to me (and everything is default). Other than setting up a secure password and setting up wireless, what would you recommend that I change in the settings?

I've been reading about the Luci interface. I'm not that familiar with it (prior to this), but it seems simple enough to navigate for setting up some basic things (for my use case). From what I understand, after installing from here (https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-mt3000), the default settings are all pretty secure for basic home use.

I'm certainly not someone who will be doing complex configurations, but I'd like to be fairly secure to protect me from public wifi and typical home use. I'd potentially want to hide my network if possible and maybe connect a VPN (like NordVPN) ...I might consider those two things at a later time though. I'd basically like to know if I'm fairly secure from the getgo, so long as I properly set up a wireless network and password for Luci. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

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need to set country too.

owut for easy upgrades.
https-dns-proxy for DNS encryption.

2 Likes
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Since you’re going to be using this device for travel, look into the travelmate package. It’s designed specifically for use while traveling. Also, as @frollic already suggested, do set country in wireless settings.

You may want to change your LAN IP address to minimize the chance of address space collision with an upstream network. The default is 192.168.1.1, and it’s the default in many other systems. Other common defaults are 192.168.0.1, 192.168.254.1, and 10.0.0.1, so set it to something out of the way, say, 192.168.42.1 or 10.19.84.1.

Now, VPN… VPNs are computationally intensive, and travel routers are built first and foremost for compactness and low power consumption. Those requirements are in a clear conflict, so set your performance expectations accordingly.