Review on 🔌 GL.iNet GL-AR300M16 Portable Mini Travel Wireless Pocket Router - Multi-purpose WiFi Router with OpenWrt, Dual Ethernet Ports, OpenVPN/Wireguard VPN, and USB 2.0 Port by John Snook

I have a Verizon Access Point (AC791L) with an external antenna that I use for rural broadband. However, the built-in WiFi in the hotspot is weak and can't reach all parts of my house, so I wanted to connect the hotspot to a more powerful Netgear Nighthawk router. The problem is that the access point does not have a LAN port. So before buying this Gl.inet router, I connected a laptop hotspot to a USB-C port and used the laptop's LAN port to connect to the internet (using Win10) to the router. This worked fine except it limited my 24/7 laptop usage and bandwidth was low. I bought this mini router to act as an intermediary between a Verizon hotspot and a router, not a laptop. After booting, I configured the GL.inet router as "usb tethering" on the GL-inet setup page. I also disabled the Wi-Fi signal on the GL-Inet to avoid interfering with the Nighthawk router. I then slid the unmarked physical switch on the side of the GL-inet router to the right, which put the router into "bridge mode". That's all it took. I restarted three devices (Access Point, GL-Inet router and Nighthawk router) and everything worked! This took the load off my laptop and now I have a tiny device that connects my hotspot to my home router. Please note that after adding this router as an intermediary between the access point and the entire home router, devices with Wi-Fi connections to the router may require a reboot and be assigned new IP addresses. The best news is that my rural internet connection speed has tripled. . Not sure why, but obviously installing the hardware/firmware of this device is better than using a laptop/ICS. Using a hotspot laptop router connection, I got a stable 6-7 Mbps connection. This is quite slow and allows at most one streaming event at a time. With this device I now get a stable connection with a speed of 20-22 Mbit/s. Much faster and I can finally use multiple devices at the same time without buffering/dropouts. Best $25 to Spend on Rural Internet Setup. Very happy. My only concern is the Chinese firmware and hardware which I believe is spying on my usage and opening a loophole (see SuperMicro Embedded Chip saga) so I will keep an eye on this situation and traffic.