My experience with the GL. iNet GXL-AXT1800 travel VPN router

I cannot even begin to review all the different types of travel router products made by this company. Given my budget for this project and its fabled value to begin with (this is all a pursuit of some rumors that have been floating around the internet) I bought what I saw as the diamond in the ruff. Not only that it shipped out via amazon even though I purchased directly through their website with a 10 dollar off coupon!

First start: the instructions are not super straight forward. There is an important note you should know on first start up: you need to scan the QR code with your phone and set up the passwords first before your laptop will be able to log in to the router... That is not included in the instructions. They say plug it in and log in with the password on the sticker to set it up... that is not accurate. The pass word is not labelled such: it is labelled as the key. But they key does not work without first initializing. That is the only note to the instructions that needs to be made.

This device uses the OpenVPN infrastructure and as such is super straight forward. VPN selection is even less so. You need to do your research because not all VPN clients are created equal. If you are truly worried about your privacy then VPN research is just as important as anything else in this world. You want a VPN with a strict "no log" policy that has had their legitimacy backed up in court. You can choose what you like but I chose NordVPN as they have the largest list of servers and have run audits on their own servers that they publish so that no one even bothers going to court with them. You cant fault any of the VPN services that have won court battles verifying their value but if you want choices as to where to log in from then I would suggest the biggest. Price does not vary a lot between the choices even when some are double the price (100 bucks a year) compared to their contemporaries.

I will say that the router gets kind of warm to the touch after 2 hours being online. I get that its a travel router and therefore probably isnt designed to run for days on end but I do find it curious. I am happy that they chose a unusual router IP range 192.168.8.1 as the routers IP address.