GL.iNet GL-SFT1200 (Opal) Portable Wifi Router for Travel, Wireless Access Point, Pocket Wifi 5 Abroad, Secure Vpn Router, Mobile Wireless Routers for Modem, Mini Routers for Hotel, Plane, Openwrt

If you've not used GL-iNet routers you are missing out. I needed a value for money travel router with 5GHz Wifi that would connect to my 5G HotSpot (via WIFI 5GHz), provide easy VPN access via WireGuard to my home network, have gigabit ethernet ports and be powered by USB C. This router fulfilled all of those requirements :-) The initial setup is super easy. Power up the device, connect to it either by WIFI or one of the Gigabit ethernet ports and put the router IP into your browser. From there you have an extremely user friendly interface with all the options you could ever need. Just to summarise these, you can connect to another Wifi source for your internet, you can plug in an ethernet source or you can even tether from a USB source (whether your phone or a USB stick). Once connected to the internet you can configure your VPN. Here you have the choice of OpenVPN or WireGuard. As my home router has a WireGuard VPN server built in, I used that and immediately I was connected. The other nice touch with regards to this router and the VPN connection is the switch on the side of the unit. You can configure this for several options, one being VPN on or off - what a smart idea!!! You can of course configure the onboard firewall as well, opening ports, DMZ etc etc. For such a small device it's heavily loaded with relevant functionality. Due to the complexity of my home network I did run into an issue where I was routing the internet connection through to the VPN, but my local network resources were not reachable. I reached out to the GL-iNet support team and they responded very quickly with great support. After changing the routing mode of the VPN (to Customize Routing Rules) I was able to apply customised routing rules specifically for my home VLAN, and as a bonus, was also able to push internet traffic out locally from the connected WIFI source instead of going via my home network :-) The support I received was first class, and the engineer even went as far as giving me the reason why I needed to use the customised routing. This was due to an IP range clash I had somewhere along the way. If the router detects this it won't push traffic automatically down the VPN tunnel, to prevent potential IP clash issues. However, you can override this easily and this is what I ended up doing. It now works flawlessly. A Huge thanks again to GL-iNet support, it really was a pleasure communicating with you. I can honestly recommend these devices and this company, what a great end user experience !!

This won’t be everyone’s use case, but someone out there will be in the same boat. I picked up the Opal not for travelling, but to spin up a NAT’d guest network at home. My main network is basically a home-lab ecosystem, and the last thing I want is visitors connecting their random devices directly to it. The Opal gives them a normal, no-nonsense Wi-Fi experience without me having to collect MAC addresses or fight with whitelists. Setup was straightforward. I put it on its own subnet, plugged the WAN port into my main network, and it was up. At first it treated my LAN like the public internet, but the router is way more configurable than its price suggests. You can SSH into it, tweak IPTables, block inter-subnet access, and even enable an advanced control panel module straight from the web interface. It’s essentially a cut-down Linux box with a friendly skin on top. A genuinely nice touch is the hardware switch for its VPN client. The router can connect to a VPN server and push all guest traffic through it, and you can toggle this on and off on the side of the unit. Useful in the UK, where half the internet wants you to upload your passport for reasons unknown. The one real snag was OpenVPN performance. Without tunnelling, I was getting around 250 Mbps on 5 GHz. The moment OpenVPN client was enabled, speeds dropped to single digits, around 5–7 Mbps. It’s not the router’s fault; OpenVPN is single-threaded and the Opal’s CPU just doesn’t have the grunt for heavy crypto. It routes traffic fine, but encrypting it is another matter. WireGuard was the fix. After spinning up a WireGuard server remotely, the Opal managed around 50–60 Mbps through the tunnel, which is more than enough for guests to browse and stream. I suspect the higher-end GL.iNet models would perform better here simply because of the upgraded CPUs. Overall, I’m happy with it. It’s a small, cheap, surprisingly capable router that’s perfect for experiments, side networks, labs, and guest isolation. If that’s your type of setup, it’ll probably slot in nicely.

Excelente! Muy bueno y práctico

When you travel and want a safe connection, or when the wifi you live is shared and want to protect yourself.. It sets up really simple and is stable and fast and offers so many add ons..

Świetny router, jak za tą cenę dobra wydajność i możliwość instalacji MQTT i innych pluginów

Ik heb het kort getest, want ik krijg het pas met kerst. Maar ziet er heel goed uit. Ik wil op vakantieverblijf gebruiken om meerdere apparaten over een wireguard tunnel naar mijn thuis internet verbinding te laten lopen. Mijn internetverbinding thuis is niet de snelste, dus deze goedkope variant is voor mij snel genoeg, en goedkoper dan een zelfgebouwde op basis van een raspberry pi. En deze werkt meteen.

Preisleistung unschlagbar, dieser frei konfigutierbare Router ist perfekt für WoWa Camper und Co. Fängt ohne Probleme das WLan vom CAmpingplatz etc. auf und stellt es, mit guter Sendeleistung, im WoWa, Camper, Zelt oder was auch immer bereit. VPN und CO machen das ganze auch sicher. Da schöne und Übersichtliche UI machen die Bedienung kinderleicht.