Saturday I checked into a hotel with my family. The room looked great, everything seemed fine, but the hotel WiFi was exactly what you'd expect: slow, unstable, with a captive portal. However, sitting on the nightstand was a free RJ45 ethernet port. That's when I smiled, opened my backpack, and pulled out the GL.iNet.

The setup: 5 minutes, zero hassle

I plugged a GL.iNet AXT1800 (Slate AX) into the room's ethernet port with a short patch cable. The router picked up an IP instantly from the hotel network. I turned on its WiFi and within a minute I had a private network in the room, with my own SSID and password from home.

My wife and kid connected their phones and tablets right away - no captive portal, no re-authentication every hour, no signal drops. One tiny router, and the entire room had stable internet.

WireGuard VPN: I was basically home

Here's where it gets interesting. The GL.iNet has a WireGuard client permanently configured, connecting to my UCG-Fiber gateway back home in Bucharest, which runs as a WireGuard server. The moment the router booted up, the VPN tunnel came up automatically.

All traffic from the hotel room flowed through the WireGuard tunnel, through my home network, and exited through my home internet connection. My home DNS, my home firewall, all my network rules - everything active. Physically I was at a hotel, but from a networking perspective, I was home.

Emby: movies and shows on the hotel TV

The room had a Smart TV running Android. I disconnected it from the hotel WiFi and connected it to the GL.iNet network. Installed the Emby app from Google Play, entered my home Emby server address, and that was it - my entire media library was available. Movies, TV shows, music, everything streamed through the WireGuard tunnel straight from the server sitting in my living room in Bucharest.

The kid watched cartoons, my wife watched a series, I worked on my laptop. Everyone on their own device, all through the same GL.iNet, all through VPN.

Home IPTV: when the hotel cable TV doesn't work

The hotel's cable TV installation was poor - weak signal, pixelated picture, macroblocking on most channels. The kind of experience that ruins your evening. But I had a better solution.

At home I have a VU+ Solo 4K running Enigma2, connected to cable TV, which exposes HTTP streams on the local network. Through the WireGuard tunnel, those streams were directly accessible from the hotel room as if the receiver was next door. I opened the stream in Emby on the TV and had clean IPTV with no artifacts, all my home channels. Perfect quality, zero pixelation.

Real-world performance: the numbers

I ran some tests with iperf3 and ping through the tunnel, from my MacBook connected to the GL.iNet via an AXAGON USB-C to Ethernet adapter:

• Throughput: 74-92 Mbps consistent through the WireGuard tunnel
• Latency: 5-7 ms to 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare DNS)
• Bottleneck: the hotel's ethernet port, capped at 100 Mbps - not the GL.iNet

For video streaming, IPTV, and simultaneous browsing on 4-5 devices, 74-92 Mbps through VPN is more than enough. WireGuard adds negligible overhead - less than 1 ms of extra latency compared to a direct connection.

Why a travel router is worth it

A pocket-sized GL.iNet solves several real problems when traveling:

• Hotel WiFi is almost always terrible - but the ethernet port, when available, usually offers decent bandwidth
• Security - you're not on a shared network with every guest; all your traffic is encrypted through WireGuard
• One device, many connections - phones, tablets, laptops, Smart TV - all on one private network
• Access to home resources - NAS, media server, cameras, IPTV - everything available as if you were home
• Zero config on every trip - plug the cable in and you're done; WireGuard connects automatically

Equipment used

• GL.iNet AXT1800 (Slate AX) - travel router with native WireGuard support, WiFi 6, USB-C powered
• UniFi UCG-Fiber - home gateway, configured as WireGuard server
• Emby Media Server - media server on Docker, running at home in Bucharest
• VU+ Solo 4K (Enigma2) - satellite/cable receiver with HTTP streaming on local network
• AXAGON USB-C to Ethernet - adapter for MacBook, used for iperf3 testing

Conclusion

A travel router with WireGuard turns any hotel room into an extension of your home network. No more depending on hotel WiFi, no more exposure on public networks, and full access to everything you have at home - media, IPTV, internal services. The setup takes 5 minutes once and works identically at any hotel, Airbnb, or remote location.

You basically never leave home. Only physically.

If you need help with a similar setup or a VPN infrastructure for travel or remote work, get in touch.