![]() ![]() I designed a simple #3dprinted thing that I probably don't need. There’s also a manual with just enough diagrams and instructions to get you logged in to your new router and explain what the lights and switch mean. You’ll find a tiny Mango router inside the box along with an appropriate USB cable and a flat-pack Ethernet patch cord. The box is smaller than every single router and switch in my house. Using your 4G router to get to the Internet won’t help you there. In this kind of situation you might want to be on the local network to Chromecast to the TV. Will there be good WiFi signal in my childhood bedroom? Maybe. When I visit my father, who knows what I’ll get. If I go to Brian’s house, I’m confident that my laptop will have a good WiFi signal anywhere I choose to sit. The Mango is handy when you need to connect to a local network. There are definitely reasons to carry a separate 4G router, but I don’t tend to get into those situations. The last half-dozen phones I’ve owned can already act like a 4G WiFi router. You’d use a router with a 4G modem when all you want is Internet access. The Mango is for a very different use case. Why would you buy a travel router without a 4G modem?! Saving money, space, and weight is a good trade for me. I don’t use these devices all that often, and when I do, I don’t use them for long. Sure, I’m giving up an Ethernet port, a microSD slot, and a 5.8 gHz radio, but I can live with that. The Mango N300 costs $25 less, weighs 20 grams less, while still having 128 MB of RAM. Best of all, it seems that all GL.iNet routers run OpenWRT out of the box! Not bad for a tiny $45 device. It looks like a fantastic upgrade: 802.11ac, 2.4 and 5.8 gHz radios, 2 LAN ports, 1 WAN port, a microSD card slot, 16 MB of flash, and 128 MB of RAM. When I mentioned the RavPower unit in my post about designing a network engineer’s tookit, two different people pointed me at the GL.iNet Creta AR750. I don’t remember what was blocking this from happening, but it sure looks like OpenWRT now runs on the FileHub Plus. When I was actively using the FileHub Plus, I was wishing it could run OpenWRT. This was problematic, but I had an easy band-aid. When TheLab.ms first opened, they had two network ports in each classroom, and each classroom had seating for 16 people. If I was ever visiting a place with little to no WiFi, I could plug the Dingus into an available Ethernet port, then I could sit wherever I wanted. We used to refer to this as the WiFi Dingus. It can run for quite a few hours without being plugged into power, or it can be used as a USB battery bank to charge your other gadgets. It has an SD card slot for file sharing, and it has a built-in battery. It has one Ethernet port for the WAN side of the network, and 802.11g for the LAN side of the network. One of them reminded me of my outdated RavPower FileHub Plus. I posted about my project to design a nice case for my network engineer’s toolkit, and all sorts of tool suggestions started popping up. I didn’t expect to be buying a new travel router this week. ![]()
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