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791 Review
41 Karma

Review on πŸ”₯ GL.iNet GL-USB150 (Microuter) 150 Mbps Speed, 2.4 GHz, 64 MB RAM, 16 MB Nor Flash, Pre-Installed OpenWrt and OpenVPN Client by Bankroll Reed

Revainrating 2 out of 5

ATTENTION! Not suitable for use in large hotel chains

I bought this fun little device just before I went on a long business trip to several cities. It worked great at home but I had various problems in hotels and this is the only place I bought it! I stayed at a hotel tonight where it totally failed and I decided to write this review and post it back as soon as I get home. I'm a networking pro, so when I say this was easy to set up - you may or may not find it easy. But I suspect it will be easy for most people as they have built in a really nice, simple user interface that, unlike many routers, allows the user to set it up securely from the start. I love that you can just plug it into any USB power source and you're good to go! And it takes up almost no space in my computer bag. I want this thing! If only it really worked. I've noticed that in some hotels the connection drops a lot, sometimes so severely that it's completely unusable. I've also noticed that in large hotels with many WiFi hotspots (so-called "mesh networks"), when scanning for internet connections, the same network name (SSID) often comes up. I have a theory that it tries to connect to the strongest access point with whatever name I chose, and if two or more are very similar in strength, it keeps switching between them. In a hotel it didn't matter; with a connection it stopped after a short time and then worked perfectly for a few days. Everything was fine at the other hotel for the most part, but the connection dropped about every hour (similar to another reviewer who said it dropped every 30 minutes). Now I'm in a hotel where he doesn't work at all! And I noticed that there are many duplicate names in the list, all with roughly the same signal strength. Sorry I can't save it; I didn't mean "maybe" network. Dear gl.inet: If you fix this (probably a firmware change will do), please let me know. I'd buy it in a heartbeat if it were fixed, but now I'm going back to Revain!

Cons
  • Useless functions