I’ve been using a GLiNet Slate for a couple of years. It’s often painful connecting it to hotel wifi when there is a login page. MAC cloning is sometimes helpful. Can I do the same with the Purple?
What else do I need to know, and what’s been your experience?
I have an FWG+ at home and a travel purple. When I travel, I connect my purple to the hotel WiFi and then establish a VPN back home and it works fantastic. I’m really happy with this setup.
Connecting to the hotel WiFi isn’t terribly hard. Connect your purple to the WiFi using the Firewalla app, connect to your purple’s WiFi and you’ll get the login page.
Not to dissuade you from a Purple, but I’ve been using my old Slate and now Beryl AX at hotels without any issues. Curious what issues you’re having. Make sure you go into advanced DNS settings and disable the setting (forget the name) that is recommended to be disabled if having captive portal issues. If you’ve enabled the VPN kill switch option that will have to be disabled when first connecting. Then just connect and point browser to captive.Apple.com (or similar) and this has worked for me 99% of the time. And works amazingly well connecting back to my FWG+ via WireGuard.
It’s awful hard to justify the cost of the FWP when the gli.net Slate AX 1800 equals or exceeds the capabilities of the FWP for 100 USD directly from gli.net. Many hotels require eap supported authentication to work with portals which the Slate AX 1800 supports, and my FWP does not.
Well, unless you have a genuine work case that need a purple (e.g. you wish to set up a whole LAN in hotel and need site-to-site VPN with bidirectional access with home LAN), otherwise your travel router is good and the purple is not giving you many extra.
Thank you.
Do you know if the “connect to the wifi through the app” experience is documented somewhere? That sounds like it might be the piece I’m looking for.
What’s the value for doing this and not just using the VPN on mobile devices directly? The only value I can see is if you use an ATV/FireTV.
I have a Beryl, but rarely pull it out because it is a PITA to get past hotel wifi…easier to just keep my WireGaurd on all the time on my mobiles.
I have this setup too. I came to use the Purple for travel because my GLiNets (yes plural) had so much trouble logging into captive portals. I now have no problems at all. No regrets!
This. I had a lot of problems connecting to hotel portals with my own Slate, until I realized my custom NextDNS settings were the problem. Connect first, custom DNS after!
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Curious which hotels? The captive portal most use is not EAP.
Have you had any issues with the AX 1800 overheating?
Use case, it’s borderline. We travel a lot as a family, so generally end up with 8-10 devices connected. The filtering for the kids would be welcome. For me, I’m a little obsessed with the data my FWG+ gives me at home and would be interested to learn more about what’s sitting at the perimeter of a hotel room.
I’d be first to admit that I probably don’t need it. It’s a rare toy purchase for me though, which I think will bring both interest (for me) and value (for the family).
https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023771674-Traveling-with-and-without-Firewalla
How to configure the Purple for travel.
For me personally, it’s nice to be able to access all of the stuff I have at home when I’m away. YMMV.
What’s the value for doing this and not just using the VPN on mobile devices directly? The only value I can see is if you use an ATV/FireTV.
I travel with an Apple TV, 2 Homepod Minis, my iPhone, and sometimes my iPad and a GliNet Beryl that I use as an access point. They all just hook up to the AP without any setup. And as a bonus, my Apple TV can interact with my home DVR as if it was still at home.
I can at any given time travel a work laptop and phone, personal laptop and phone, possibly an iPad, possibly a Roku stick and then if the boss lady comes along her phone, kindle and so on.
That’s annoying to set up. Plus there’s the occasional hotel that charges you for more than one or two devices on the Wi-Fi.
With a travel router it looks like one device on the Wi-Fi and you have the same SSID everywhere you go. You just have to get the purple on and you’re good to go.
The Okura and the Royal Park both in Tokyo. Maybe more prevalent in Asia.
I have not experienced it getting unusually hot. I have one vpn session open, and all traffic sent out via the vpn when traveling. I have it as a backup router for the home, and it may get warm in that situation, but I have a usb powered fan for it to sit on if it becomes the home gateway.
Well yes, then the purple can do that for you. But for me, I would rather save the hundreds bucks, install wireguard, create a separate wireguard profile at your home FWG+ for each of the devices, then you can still do the monitoring/filtering like home. The point is, if you have no control over their devices to force them to use your own VPN, you can neither force them to connect your travel router though.