Heads up to anyone looking at Gl-inet's stuff: their Mediatek routers are good due to solid mainline kernel support. The Qualcomm stuff isn't nearly as good.

I have the mango router, it's a little older but very capable and it's got me out of a tight spot a number of times. Like when we've moved house but don't have an internet connection installed yet, just plug in a phone or 4G dongle and away you go.

Before that I had a little TP-Link portable router (MR3020?) that I'd flashed with ROOter - https://www.ofmodemsandmen.com/

I wanted to mention it because it's been a great plug-and-play openwrt derivative option with support for a lot of devices.

Another super interesting open source project without a screenshot to be found

How do you use this in practice?

Do you plug your phone in via USB-C and then use the WIFI off of that instead of the hotspot on your device?

Or do you go to hotels and use this to connect to their wifi and then use your own AP?

I have a cheapo Android phone I had laying around, used developer mode to make it always select tether instead of mass storage and I've got a (prepaid) data SIM in there.

When we travel the Beryl AX is our own hotspot, all devices can connect to its network. Then I just pick the best way to get the Beryl to the internet. Sometimes it's wired, sometimes it's connected to a WiFi, sometimes I need to plug in the phone and we use that.

And the best thing is that it can do failover, so I can have the hotel WiFi as the primary connection, but it'll fall back to the 4G phone connection if something goes wrong.

I used mine with the same SSID as my home network!

So when I travel I can either tether a phone and all the family devices just connect, or bridge it to the destination network and again let all the devices connect as if at home!

So could you explain the process by which you ‘tether a phone’? Is that don’t by plugging the phone in via usb? Is it paired via Bluetooth? Do you wifi the phone to it and spread the internet like that? I think some of us are quite curious about the specifics on that point :)

Sounds great!

P.s. I love (and am horrified) at how easy it is to ‘hijack’ a devices wifi just by making a network with the same name (and no password). I’ve done it myself over the years to make it easier for family or friends while travelling. But I always felt a bit ick about it working.

Hi,

I tether via a cable.

Because it's my work (Dev/Tech/Nerd) I have multiple phones with SIM cards.

So I physically tether a phone to the device.

I don't believe the device OP linked can a bridged WiFi network as such.

You can do a similar thing with a Mac:

Plug in your iPhone via a cable, then share the iPhone's tethered data connection over the Macs WiFi or ethernet port.

It's actually a good way to get around restrictions on some mobile SIM plans that don't allow them to be used as Data SIMs!

It shouldn't work if the security setup is different; if the home network is WPA2 then another open network with the same SSID should be ignored.

I have small case with this router, ethernet cable and usb cable for phone.

So it really depends where I am, so I can choose between USB, ethernet or wifi.

But I think most use for me have been USB tethering in my home country (unlimited mobile data).

I just like how router does adblocking (Adguard Home DNS) and VPN with wireguard/tailscale.

I have the previous gen, and it's still really good for use in hotels. But... I have been thinking of upgrading. :)

Yup! It's great! I've bought it this summer going to Europe and it's lovely!

I have one of these too. One of the best purchases I've made.