this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2024
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Mobile hotspot with VPN: is GL.iNet the only game in town and is it trustworthy? (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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So I'm on the market for a 4G or 5G mobile hotspot with a build-in VPN client I can carry around in my backpack and connect my cellphone to. I've looked far and wide, and really the only manufacturer that seems to make what I want is GL.iNet.

The two battery-powered models they offer that interest me are the Mudi v2 and the Puli: they only do 4G and I wish they did 5G too, but I can live with that. Other than that, they really tick all the boxes for me.

From what I could read, the GL.iNet company also seems very open and very responsive. That's a plus too.

But I have one giant problem that prevents me from whipping out the credit card: GL.iNet is a Chinese company, and those products are sensitive applications. I know I can flash OpenWRT separately on those devices to ensure they're not doing stuff behind my back, but I don't really want to do that because I'd lose the GL.iNet plugins and custom UI. Not to mention, I have no free time for that. I'm looking for a ready-made solution if possible with this one.

Anybody knows if GL.iNet can be trusted?

Also, has anybody ordered from Europe using their EU store? They say they ship direct from Europe but they give no details.

And finally, what do you think of those two mobile VPN routers if you own one. Do they work well? I read somewhere that they can be buggy with certain VPN providers. Do they work in Europe? I assume they do since they sell EU plugs but maybe there are caveats.

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Honestly, for your use case, you should just get a older cell phone. Put lineage OS on it, or calyxos.. share your VPN over hotspot, these are the only two ROMs that I'm aware of that allow you to do that. This has the benefit that the VPN traffic looks just like for traffic from the phone, and you don't have to do any gymnastics to modify the TTL, or the operating system signature of the traffic.

Boom, travel router. Very portable, has a built-in battery etc etc etc etc etc

I like GLI-net, they are great, they have great hardware. If you want to buy it I endorse it. If you're paranoid flash your own firmware. If you use an end-to-end VPN from your device it doesn't matter what your mobile router uses. However the killer feature here, I think is better supplied by an older phone running the ROMs I mentioned above. It's just more portable. And you have a backup phone when you're traveling

[–] ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

get a older cell phone. Put lineage OS on it, or calyxos… share your VPN over hotspot, these are the only two ROMs that I’m aware of that allow you to do that

That's what I thought too. So I tried it on my CalyxOS phone and... it doesn't work: the hotspot doesn't route through the VPN. And from what I read, it's by design.

I have an old Nokia 4.2 running LineageOS. I might try that one.

end-to-end VPN

Incidentally, do you know if the GL.iNet devices can act as a VPN server too?

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I use a calyxos device to share VPN, as of a few months ago.

Hotspot & Tethering

  • Allow clients to use VPNs

https://calyxos.org/features/list/#network

Perhaps your confusing GOS? If not, can you cite the design decision to disallow this feature? I'd be curious to learn about it

If openwrt can do it, gli-net can do it

[–] ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

I use a calyxos device to share VPN, as of a few months ago.

Hotspot & Tethering

  • Allow clients to use VPNs

Oh wow I totally missed that. It works great! Genius!

Thank you for that. Suddenly it makes repurposing one of my old cellphones a very simple and viable proposition.

(and I'm posting this from my laptop connected to the hotspot connected to the Calyx VPN 🙂)

[–] Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

LineageOS implementation of this is poorly done and will leak data outside of your VPN tunnel.

https://github.com/mullvad/mullvadvpn-app/issues/4016#issuecomment-2422616515

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

True, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Sharing VPN from a phone over a hotspot, means all of that traffic looks like it's coming from the phone. Admittedly if the VPN dies, the routing will bypass it. But the benefit here is immense, if you use visible, you have unlimited data from the phone, but very slow data on tethering. Sharing the VPN from the phone, gives you unlimited data on the hotspot. That's a pretty good trade-off

[–] Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

No offence but that's terrible logic.

There is no point in using a vpn if you don't care if your data leaks outside the tunnel.

It would be much better to just use a free VPN, like proton, on all devices instead and then just use the regular hotspot functionality.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There is no point in using a vpn if you don't care if your data leaks outside the tunnel.

Sharing VPN from a phone over a hotspot, means all of that traffic looks like it's coming from the phone.

[–] Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Either you didn't read the github comments or dont understand how vpns work.

If the VPN over hotspot function leaks data outside the tunnel, then your phones data is going to be revealed in the clear.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

And yet even with that pitfall there is a valid benefit of using a shared VPN over the hotspot. Specifically making your data look like it's coming from the phone so it isn't throttled by the carrier as tethered data. The failure scenario being the data goes slower.

I recognize the problems you list as valid, and yet there is still a beneficial tradeoff decision to be made.

No need to insult me, I both read the GitHub and understand how VPNs work.

[–] Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Sorry my bad, I should of responded in a more professional tone.

Yeah I totally agree there is a valid reason to have the function but its all moot if the function doesn't work correctly.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Even if it only works sometimes, there is still a use case with a benefit. I.e. speed throttling on tethering

[–] twinnie 7 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

There are others that aren’t Chinese but nothing anywhere near the price bracket you’ll get from GL.Inet. I wouldn’t trust them either, I’d just take the hit and lose the app. Since it’s OpenWRT I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an alternative to the apps. Flashing standard OpenWRT to them is really easy, you just download it from the site and flash through the firmware upgrade option, no dramas. Many VPNs will have instructions on how to set up their service on OpenWRT.

[–] ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There are others that aren’t Chinese but nothing anywhere near the price bracket you’ll get from GL.Inet

Can you give me some pointers to non-Chinese equivalents of those GL.iNet routers? I'm quite ready to suck up the extra cost.

[–] twinnie 1 points 2 weeks ago

About to head off to work but I think Netgear make one, but it’s like 6-7x more expensive. And it’s probably made in China anyway.

[–] ShortN0te@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

The cheap models can not be flashed with openwrt since they use some proprietary drivers or something.

The complete Opal series is not supporte iirc.

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

Not all glinet routers can be flashed to vanilla openwrt as my friend found out

[–] bloubz@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's crazy to fear for Chinese espionage/tracking more than European or US one

[–] ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

At this point, I think China is well known for infiltrating local businesses and forcing them to sell networking gear with trojans.

The US is better known for surveilling people indirectly by exploiting corporate surveillance data collected by big tech monopolies doing their bidding for them and by directly "tapping the line". I don't think US officials asking US companies to compromise their products and keep quiet about it would fly in the US. At least not yet. But I wouldn't put it past them either.

To be honest, of all three, I'd rather purchase something made in Europe, even for a premium.

[–] foiledAgain@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

I have been using one of their top end routers for nearly a year. Have stock fw installed and chosen not to flash with openwrt. I’m privacy conscious but figured with the amount of customers and forum space dedicated to their products someone would have noticed any funny business by now. Router works great and have had no problems over several updates.

[–] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

I'm looking to get one soon enough from the EU store. Depending on the product they will say if it is shipping from China directly. I guess we have to trust some of these companies at some point with all of our devices. I plan to use it with a commercial vpn

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

I don't have any recommendations, but if you download the table of hardware spreadsheet, you can use libreoffice to filter devices by column. like there's a column with the device type, but be careful (and open in a sense) because the classification is not always right. you may also want to reorder the columns, because the default ordering is not that convenient

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Anything that can run vanilla openwrt will do just fine.

[–] Lemmchen@feddit.org 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

But then you need a separate LTE/5G stick.

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

There are some that have builtin LTE modems

I don't know viable, available or pricey these are but I found the following in the table of hardware and there are still about as many of them left I didn't copy.

https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_extended_all

COMFAST	CF-E7
Edge-corE	OAP-100
GL.iNet	GL-AP1300
MikroTik	RBwAPGR-5HacD2HnD&R11e-LTE (wAP ac LTE)
MikroTik	RBwAPR-2nD (wAP R)
Sony	AI Home Gateway (NCP-HG100)
ZBT	WE1026-5G
ZBT	WE1026-H
Arcadyan / Astoria	Easybox 904 LTE
BOLT	Arion
BOLT	BL100
Cell C	RTL30VW
https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_extended_all
[–] archy@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

There is an interview with the founder on one of the Privacy podcasts. You can form your opinion. My opinion - yes, they are trustworthy and you can do with them anything that you can with any Linux box, alternatively flash a clean OpenWRT for extra paranoia