Need travel router for hotel wifi hotspots

[koburg]

Hi all.

When I'm on holiday i often bring my laptop (not always) and my iPad and iPhones (always have those with me)

I have been searching the internet a lot to see if can find a travel router who can do this Connect to a hotel wifi who want to authenticate thru a webpage. I always have to connect again if i have put the unit to sleep and some times I can max connect to one or maybe two units at a time.

So i want a travel router which are able to handle this so i can connect all devices to this for internet. I can bring my laptop (macbook pro) if it can do any better with this each time. but I'm not gonna share internet via bluetooth to slow / low range.

I have been looking at the dir-510 from dlink or the netgear pr2000 can any of these do this if can you explain HOW i do it please?

-allan

 

[troels]

Have you recently stayed in hotel with a really lousy WiFi? That used to be much better the year before? Now we know why. No offence intended, but please think of other guests.

 

[sfx2000]

Asus WL-330NUL is what I've been using recently on travel. Prior to that I was using an older Airport Express, but many hotels these days do not offer ethernet in the rooms.

TP-Link has a couple of interesting devices down this niche as well.

FWIW - hotspot mode on my smartphone, as many hotel WiFi networks are overwhelmed these days with Smartphones, Tablets, and Laptops - along with changing data usage habits by the users... my last trip, the hotel WiFi was basically useless, and fell back to using my mobile hotspot.

 

[thiggins]

Authentication frequency depends on the hotel. Not much you can do about it.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32376-n150-wireless-travel-router-roundup

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32396-n300-travel-router-mini-roundup

 

[koburg]

Authentication frequency depends on the hotel. Not much you can do about it.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32376-n150-wireless-travel-router-roundup

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32396-n300-travel-router-mini-roundup

So what you mean is that it is not possible to use a travel router to do such thing? connection a authen webpage and share that with other devices then?

i have read all the round ups before making this thread in the forum.

 

[thiggins]

So what you mean is that it is not possible to use a travel router to do such thing? connection a authen webpage and share that with other devices then?

No it's possible. From your first post I thought your problem was that you just wanted to avoid having to re-authenticate.

 

[koburg]

No it's possible. From your first post I thought your problem was that you just wanted to avoid having to re-authenticate.

I don't care if i need to re-authenticate i just need to know what to do to make it work and how i set it up on the router and if I can use on of those dlink and/or the net gear or i need another one router instead?

and 90% of the hotels do only have wifi not cable.

 

[stevech]

Hotel WiFi improvements

Some travel routers have "WiFi as WAN", meaning the travel router's WiFi becomes a client of the hotel's WiFi, and simultaneously becomes a router with WiFi access for your devices.

The only benefit of these is that you can place the device in a spot in the room with best signal from the hotel. Marginally useful.

If the hotel WiFi has weak signals in your room, not much you can do about it other than some small router with a directional antenna of 10dBi or more gain. That's too bulky to carry.

The alternative I use often is Verizon LTE. It's often much better than hotel WiFi. But not free of course. If you smart phone on LTE gets a good signal, newer ones have a HotSpot capability where the phone becomes a WiFi access point for your devices, sharing cellular. Some of Verizon's data plans include hotspot for free; Other plans charge about $20/mo but you can opt-in, opt-out as need be, and get pro-rated charges.

Some companies with WiFi as WAN and routers with USB for cellular modems include Cradlepoint. They're pricey but good. You can find their travel routers on eBay at affordable prices.

 

[sfx2000]

Have you recently stayed in hotel with a really lousy WiFi? That used to be much better the year before? Now we know why. No offence intended, but please think of other guests.

Been my experience that having a travel router attaching to the Hotel WiFi is a better place to be, instead of having multiple nodes attaching to the hotel AP's, there is a single node, and it aggregates traffic...

The real issue here is the explosion of smartphones with WiFi, along with Tablets. The networks as designed/deployed, were not built out for 3 devices per guest - and phones/tablets tend to be much more chatty than laptops.

Sidenote - A recent place that I stayed at provided complementary WiFi with two SSID's - hhonors and attwifi - and my phone and tablet immediately attached to the hotel wifi (handset and tablet are on ATT 4G/LTE) - and the hotel's WiFi was so overloaded that the user experience on the WiFi was magnitudes worse than staying on LTE - hence putting my handset into hotspot mode and using it as my WiFi for my stay rather that use the hotel's WiFi (at $12USD a day I might add, Full Service Hilton properties still charge for WiFi compared to Hampton Inns or their other properties).

 

[sfx2000]

Some companies with WiFi as WAN and routers with USB for cellular modems include Cradlepoint. They're pricey but good. You can find their travel routers on eBay at affordable prices.

Totally missed a chance to mention Cradlepoint - I used to use a CRT35, and it was pretty awesome... checking eBay, and they still go for around 50-70 bucks, which is amazing considering how old the device is.

 

[koburg]

Thank you all for your Reply and inputs about this "project".

To let all know I live in Europe. and some have written about using the cell phone for sharing internet that is what i do in my home country (Denmark).
There I have a good deal from the operator. But when I'm around in Europe they charge aprox 0,20 Dollars / PR MB download so that can add up very fast. So that is not an option for me at the moment (in 2016 Europe have decided to remove all roaming charges so that you will be able to use your own local operator prices all over Europe whit no extra cost).

So I decided to buy an extra USB wifi card (bear extender) for my laptop so i can make a hot spot from my laptop when needed.