I think this fits the rules but If this doesnt let me know and I'll delete. Hey all, Overall problem statement: I'm looking for a small device (SBC if available) that I can use as a tail scale access point for travel and I'm hoping someone has done something similar. Basically I would like to have something small enough that I can toss in my travel bag that I can hook into a hotel network and have access to my home services (mainly jellyfin) on my kindle/work laptop. Not all of my devices support VPN or tailscale and having them already on a known network with built in VPN makes it 10x easier to deal with when traveling (login into hotel WiFi with a kindle Paperwhite sucks!) Ideally it would have dual gig Ethernet and built in WiFi. If this works out well enough I would like to give a few of these to the family so they can access things as well, so cost is a bit important.
I found a banana pi R3-mini that I thought would work out of the box (wifi6 + dual gig + small) but it seems too new for full software support with tail scale and I don't currently have the skills to roll my own software for it. Is there anything out there that you all have used for this type of use case?
I know I can switch to wire guard but I'm not confident I can set that up securely and reliably but if that's my only option I think I did find a good guide.
So I'm at a crossroads of learning to build my own openwrt install with the correct packages, learning how to setup wire guard, or asking for recommendations.
Edit: Thanks for all the recommendations. Looks like openwrt has released a new build for the banana pi that I have so I'm going to try that again before trying to setup wire guard. The GL.inet devices look like they have an older version of openwrt, so they support tailscale via the openwrt package manager but it can be unstable. Some people have even called it alpha on those devices. So I'm hoping the newest version on the bpi-r3 will allow a more stable tailscale. I'll try to report back once I play around with it more.
GL.iNet are good ones, or if you want to go the Rambo mode, then an orange pi r1 plus, one of these will do the work. Good luck
Plus one for the gli.net router. I've got the Beryl AX and it's great. Ended up going with a wireguard VPN rather than tailscale, but either would work.
GL.iNet actually has a decent UI too. When I’m on the road I don’t necessarily love hitting the CLI (okay fine I secretly do); they keep the updates going for a long time too.
It's only decent until you need to do something the GUI doesn't support. Then it will overwrite whatever you changed in the CLI or luci every time it boots up.
I’ve noticed that but I thought I just didn’t know how to persist it correctly and never bothered to find out how. If what you’re saying is accurate (which I don’t doubt) that sucks.
+1 - GL.iNet is cheap as hell and perfectly functional. It runs DD-WRT under the covers, and it’s super easy to “unlock” the full powers of the distro (literally a toggle in the basic ui, iirc). Used it on a longer trip my partner and I took a few months ago, and it was great! On-device storage is paltry, but, well, that’s not what it’s for.