A little over 12 months ago, I posted an opinion piece on travel routers. This is just an update, so for context I recommend clicking this link for a quick read.
Since then my travel router has continued to follow me everywhere. In June 2023 it followed me to the US and back, in December 2023 it came to Beechworth where (tethered to my phone) it provided the family with Internet and directly after that it came with us to Bright where it was used to log into the local caravan park's wifi and (again) distribute Internet to the family. In between all of this it has done the Melbourne to Sydney dash countless times.
Using a pocket router I have managed to:
- Plug in a single device and have all my gadgets connect to a known Wifi network;
- Avoid repeated logins to hotel captive portals (the first device to log in, connects everyone); and
- Easily VPN my way back home.
In this post Covid world where WFH is the norm, I don't travel too much but when I do, I make every effort to pack a travel router.
What inspired this article is where I'm sitting right now. My wife and mother in-law share a birthday and this year it's a milestone so rather than the usual birthday at home we decided to make it a destination. To be specific we found ourselves in Byron Bay in an AirBNB big enough for all of us.
The first thing my father in-law and I did upon arriving was plug in our travel routers. He has the newer and slimmer Beryl AX compared to my slightly older Slate AX but the otherwise matching routers are still something to see.
In my case it's a single known SSID for all devices and provides convenient network wide ad-block for all connected devices. In my father in-law's case it's an instant (and always on) VPN back home, so his laptop continues to work just as it would at home. I still treat travel routers as an essential travel accessory (one of my few mandatory travel gadgets) and continue to recommend them to anyone who'll listen.
