GL.iNet GL-SFT1200 Opal AC1200 Dual Band Travel Router OpenWrt VPN

This won’t be everyone’s use case, but someone out there will be in the same boat. I picked up the Opal not for travelling, but to spin up a NAT’d guest network at home. My main network is basically a home-lab ecosystem, and the last thing I want is visitors connecting their random devices directly to it. The Opal gives them a normal, no-nonsense Wi-Fi experience without me having to collect MAC addresses or fight with whitelists. Setup was straightforward. I put it on its own subnet, plugged the WAN port into my main network, and it was up. At first it treated my LAN like the public internet, but the router is way more configurable than its price suggests. You can SSH into it, tweak IPTables, block inter-subnet access, and even enable an advanced control panel module straight from the web interface. It’s essentially a cut-down Linux box with a friendly skin on top. A genuinely nice touch is the hardware switch for its VPN client. The router can connect to a VPN server and push all guest traffic through it, and you can toggle this on and off on the side of the unit. Useful in the UK, where half the internet wants you to upload your passport for reasons unknown. The one real snag was OpenVPN performance. Without tunnelling, I was getting around 250 Mbps on 5 GHz. The moment OpenVPN client was enabled, speeds dropped to single digits, around 5–7 Mbps. It’s not the router’s fault; OpenVPN is single-threaded and the Opal’s CPU just doesn’t have the grunt for heavy crypto. It routes traffic fine, but encrypting it is another matter. WireGuard was the fix. After spinning up a WireGuard server remotely, the Opal managed around 50–60 Mbps through the tunnel, which is more than enough for guests to browse and stream. I suspect the higher-end GL.iNet models would perform better here simply because of the upgraded CPUs. Overall, I’m happy with it. It’s a small, cheap, surprisingly capable router that’s perfect for experiments, side networks, labs, and guest isolation. If that’s your type of setup, it’ll probably slot in nicely.

If you’re looking for a portable router that packs a serious punch, the GL-iNet travel router is hard to beat. I personally use it to provide router-level VPN across all devices in my home, including smart TVs and other networked devices, and it works flawlessly. Setup is quick and straightforward. Power it on, connect via Wi-Fi or Ethernet, and enter the router’s IP in your browser. The admin panel is extremely intuitive, making it easy to configure VPN settings, connect to networks, manage devices, or adjust firewall and port options. Even complex routing setups are simple to manage thanks to the clear interface and helpful documentation. The router supports both OpenVPN and WireGuard, but from my experience its real strength is getting full network-level VPN without having to configure individual devices. The physical VPN switch on the side is a clever feature, letting you toggle the VPN on or off instantly. And if I need to travel, it’s incredibly convenient—compact and foldable enough to carry in a bag. I can take it abroad and set it up in hotels or other networks to create my own secure Wi-Fi, piggybacking off the existing router or Ethernet connections. This makes accessing a safe VPN on all my devices easy, even when away from home. Overall, this is a small, portable router that delivers full-featured, router-level VPN at home, with an incredibly user-friendly admin panel, strong Wi-Fi, and excellent support. For the price, it’s hard to find a better option. Highly recommended.

This is a full fledged router for home use AND when you are traveling and want to setup a secure network/internet or VPN connection. It uses open-source software. It is quite small and light and comes with and international adapter. It has ethernet ports and can also connect to another wi-fi provider, and still give you wired and wireless connection. Firmware gets updated easily. I am very impressed with its quality and the admin interface for configuration. If you are a technical person, you will love the ability to customize it. If you love Linux, you will like it even more. I am very happy with it. MUCH better than some other old/major brands. I think firmware uses OpenWRT; so sky is the limit as to what you can do with it. I use when using public internet connections, when abroad and when I want to create VPN tunnels. Very good price as well.

The setup on this was very simple. I tried configuring on old router with openwrt to act as a wifi repeater but found information online was either out of date or not quite what I wanted. This solved the configuration issue with it's simple web based interface. Tested speed against my one 150mb/s Internet and obtained 85mb/s using just wifi. Very happy with that. Seems well built and small enough of carry on travels. The cpu is slow using advanced settings with Luci ui, but that is to be expected at this price. Update: I tested this on my Sky 150mbs home router and the Opal crashed immediately when I tried to use a browser on phone or laptop. I then tried it when during a week at a holiday cottage where the Internet connection appeared to be a guest network running at 15mbs running from the cottage next door. The opal was rock solid all week for streaming, web browsing and video calls. Not sure why it crashes at home maybe the faster broadband or Sky router. It works for the purpose I purchased it for so I am happy.

I chose a travel router as most places we stay on holiday have wifi but I'm never very sure how secure it is and the wee unit is supposed to protect our holiday Internet use. At first I couldn't get my phone to link to the Opal no matter how I tried, but when I used my laptop to run the set up it all happened fairly quickly, so be patient and do the set up at home, not on holiday or in a place where you have no alternative devices to try and help you. Signal strength was excellent and I noticed that both my phone, after linking to the Opal's WiFi rather than my primary WiFi, and my laptop seemed much faster using and browsing pages. Its truly a small wonder, feels a solidly built unit, very portable and a very clever mains plug with UK and European adaptors that fit in seconds wherever your use. Once you are set up via the set up routine its like every other router except its tiny compared to office or even home wifi hubs. I used it with my Virgin hub at home to run the set up and play with it for an hour so it looks like it'll work with most wifi signals that you could meet in hotels or any public place producing a wifi signal that you'd like to use but aren't sure how secure it could be. The only thing you need to consider is that its mains powered so no battery use, but if most of your wifi use in a hotel, or villa/apartment, train, is inside the public wifi signal where you are, just find a plug for power, log in once to the public wifi and its log in routine, and then connect up to five devices to the Opal, no need to log in to the service's log in restrictions or limits. There's also 2 settings in the set up to create a VPN server or client using the Opal so if you want belt and braces security while you travel or work away from home, this wee bit of kit could fit the bill.

I was looking for a travel router for my place while im away at school. Its compat and easy to set up. There's many ways to connect it. The admin portal allows me to control which devices have access. Has both 5G and 2G internet for devices that can only use one or the other. You can set up time limits for devices or even guest wifi. Recommend

I originally bought these to act as network Extenders, replacing old Cat 5 cabling during a home network refresh after several decades! In princible, and from all that I read, these devices should fit the bill perfectly to allow Ethernet-only devices to connect using the Opal's Wi-Fi link to the home Eero mesh network. And they did ... for short distances and with no walls in place! They would also wander all over the mesh, connectiting to more distant nodes inexplicably, despite all attempts to lock these to a particular BSSID. I found after a lot of effort that flipping them into Extender mode rendered BSSID locking completely futile! Fine for Repeater but in Extender the LuCi config for BSSID is ignored. It took so long to work through everything, it would work for a day, or a few hours, then drift off again (pulsing blue light). I didn't keep an eye on the clock and missed the 30-day return period! So what are they good for? Well as long as you're using them in Repeater mode, all configured by the Opal's own User Interface then all will work well (assuming you're within Wi-Fi reach of course, and bear in mind these units are weak in that respect). We're taking one on holiday with us to use to mimic our home Wi-Fi for easy connectivity with the devices we take with us. They are very portable, requiring only a USB power source or using their own supplied PSU.

If you've not used GL-iNet routers you are missing out. I needed a value for money travel router with 5GHz Wifi that would connect to my 5G HotSpot (via WIFI 5GHz), provide easy VPN access via WireGuard to my home network, have gigabit ethernet ports and be powered by USB C. This router fulfilled all of those requirements :-) The initial setup is super easy. Power up the device, connect to it either by WIFI or one of the Gigabit ethernet ports and put the router IP into your browser. From there you have an extremely user friendly interface with all the options you could ever need. Just to summarise these, you can connect to another Wifi source for your internet, you can plug in an ethernet source or you can even tether from a USB source (whether your phone or a USB stick). Once connected to the internet you can configure your VPN. Here you have the choice of OpenVPN or WireGuard. As my home router has a WireGuard VPN server built in, I used that and immediately I was connected. The other nice touch with regards to this router and the VPN connection is the switch on the side of the unit. You can configure this for several options, one being VPN on or off - what a smart idea!!! You can of course configure the onboard firewall as well, opening ports, DMZ etc etc. For such a small device it's heavily loaded with relevant functionality. Due to the complexity of my home network I did run into an issue where I was routing the internet connection through to the VPN, but my local network resources were not reachable. I reached out to the GL-iNet support team and they responded very quickly with great support. After changing the routing mode of the VPN (to Customize Routing Rules) I was able to apply customised routing rules specifically for my home VLAN, and as a bonus, was also able to push internet traffic out locally from the connected WIFI source instead of going via my home network :-) The support I received was first class, and the engineer even went as far as giving me the reason why I needed to use the customised routing. This was due to an IP range clash I had somewhere along the way. If the router detects this it won't push traffic automatically down the VPN tunnel, to prevent potential IP clash issues. However, you can override this easily and this is what I ended up doing. It now works flawlessly. A Huge thanks again to GL-iNet support, it really was a pleasure communicating with you. I can honestly recommend these devices and this company, what a great end user experience !!

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works as expected, neat size, value for money

**Kompakter Router mit vielen Möglichkeiten** Der GL.iNet Opal funktioniert zuverlässig und bietet für seine kompakte Größe erstaunlich viele Möglichkeiten. Einrichtung und Bedienung sind unkompliziert, WLAN und LAN laufen stabil. Besonders praktisch sind OpenWrt, VPN und die vielseitigen Anschlussmöglichkeiten. Ideal für Reisen oder als flexibler Zweitrouter. Bin sehr zufrieden.

Klockren liten router som passar fint i husbilen!

I bought this router to use with my Behringer digital mixer. The mixer has a built in router but it is not the best in the world. The signal can cut in and out which is not a good thing for a live gig. The router is very small. It will fit into the palm of your hand, which is perfect for the small rack I have my mixer mounted in. It hooked up easily and I was able to connect without any issues. This past weekend, I used it at a gig for the fist time. I was running the sound for an outdoor gig in a park. In the past, using the internal router in the mixer, I have had to stay close to the stage in order to keep connected and even then sometimes it cut in and out. That changed this weekend. The sound system ran from 11am to 4pm without one disconnection. I was able to walk around the park with my Samsung tablet and still make sound adjustments even as far away as 50 to 100 feet. I am very happy with this router. It's in a nice small package, easy to use, has reliable connection. I would recommend this to anyone doing local band gigs who need a small router to communicate with their router.