Travel Router Unboxing: Don't Get Hacked on Vacation!

Welcome to the Security Cocktail Hour. I'm Joe Patti.

And I'm Adam Roth.

And Adam, we're doing something fun today. Something we haven't done for a while.

We're going to the beach?

No, we're not going to the beach. Although I haven't been to the beach for a while, too. You got a point there. We're going to do an unboxing again.

Like in the gym?

No, not unboxing. I know you boxed. And no, we're not unboxing. We're not. What is unboxing boxing backwards? I don't know. Now we have a we have a product we're going to be looking at. So what do we what do we have here? What are we playing with today?

Well, I know on some episodes we spoke about the about a VPN travel router and the importance of a VPN travel router. And it's funny, right? We talk about things but we don't necessarily always utilize each of these products. I said, you know, we're talking a lot about it and I do travel and I use other methods to kind of protect myself when I do travel, going to a hotel or something. But I said, it's time, let's unbox a real travel router, a physical piece of hardware. We've mentioned it, so let's discuss it.

That's right. It actually exists. So let's have a look at one. So what do we have here? What is this model, this thing we got?

So this is the GL, I believe, INET travel router. It's called a Slate AX. And for those who are not aware, a travel router kind of gives you a little bit of additional buffer between you and the hotel cloud. When you plug into a network, or anywhere you're traveling, and you're plugging in, you're getting an IP address directly from that network with no protection. Really, it's, you're exposed. All your ports on your computer.

And if it's something public, like a hotel or an airport, it's a cesspool. Yes, absolutely. God only knows what's on that network. Right.

Yeah, what do we call those networks? We call them hostile networks, right?

Hostile networks, yeah.

So what this does is it's kind of like being if you use the analogy or the similarity when you're at home and you have a modem from your cable company, but you have a router that connects to that cable modem. This is your portable router that you connect in essence to a cable modem.

Right. But this is much smaller for travel. Yes. And it has a VPN built into, right? Yes. So you can bypass all the nastiness. All right. Well, let's get, we'll talk some more, but let's get a look at this thing.

Yes.

That's a very stylish box.

Yeah. It's a nice box.

Yeah.

You know, this is the, this is the box. Um, it's, um, you know, pretty good, nice colorful packaging.

What do you pay for that? How much of these things run?

About $109 on Amazon.

On Amazon, of course.

But look, if it protects your machine from being, you know, attacked or compromised, it's worth it.

When you're traveling, you need to get into your bank account or whatever, you know, you don't have to worry. So, okay. All right, so let's open this thing up. What do we got inside?

A lot of gold.

A lot of gold, yeah, I'll bet. Is there a golden ticket in there?

So we have the let's get started documentation.

Let's get started. All right.

And I'll open it really quick. But what I'll do is this is I'm going to pull it to myself and read it. Not word for word, but basically it's telling you to, you know, connect it to the power, connect it to their Wi-Fi. And then they have a repair and reset and technical support. So not bad. They even have a QR code that's on here. See if we can get it on the camera.

Oh, what's that for? For the instructions?

Instructions in case you want to just open something up right away. You don't have to fumble searching for it on the internet.

That's kind of funny, they have the QR code to look up the instructions on the internet in the instruction manual. I don't know if that totally makes sense, but whatever.

It's a quick get started.

All right, so what's in there?

We have... Give me a second. We have the regular American US, oh no, yeah, American US plug so that you can plug it into power cord so I guess what they do here let me open up and I'll put it on the screen if you want to get the other travel like 220 you can probably buy the other piece that allows you to make it UK style or European style it's a standard USB

It's just that's the USB plug, right? You can probably use an iPhone one or something, right? Probably. That'd be my guess.

I would probably try it.

Although you might set your house on fire, or the hotel, but it's just the hotel.

Yeah, it's a hotel. Yeah, don't worry. And then you have the power. I mean, sorry, the ethernet cable. Nice little thin... I'll put it a little bit closer to the camera.

Oh, it's the thin kind. Are those cheaper or something? Is that why they always use these things?

I don't know if it's cheaper, but I think it's more manageable. Like, you could fold it up nice and cute.

Yeah, it's an Ethernet cable. Very exciting.

Do you want me to take it out and then show you, like, the whole rest of it, every inch of it, or...

I don't think that's necessary. I think everyone knows what an Ethernet cable looks like.

And this is the creme de la creme, right? I'm coming right now with this.

The item itself. That's it, huh.

Let's take the box away. Sorry, one second.

Okay. Well, that is small. That's pretty manageable. That's cool.

Throw it in your luggage, throw it in your backpack. It's got the two little antennas here.

Okay. So those antennas, is that for you to connect to or is that what connects to like the network you don't trust?

I think the goal here is for this to connect to the wireless network there. It's not meant to be wireless for you. But I think what they want to do is establish a level of security so that when you connect to their wireless network, you can connect to the router and then allows you to use the captive portal page where you have to enter your hotel name, a number and password. And then you can connect your device Directly to the Ethernet assuming that you have an Ethernet cable Well, that's the thing with a lot of computers.

You need like a dongle or an adapter these days So you got to remember to carry that too Yeah, so you have the Ethernet cable. All right. How many Ethernet ports are there? Are those three ports Ethernet?

You can use a couple of things Yes, and just to make simplify it This is the power And then you also have the ability to put a USB in there. And why is that important? I believe that you can use it for storage in case you have files and everything else. And let's say, let's say you have two computers in your, in your, um, in your hotel room, or you have, you're, you're sharing a hotel room with somebody, a company doesn't really have that money and you're sharing files between each other. Now you got yourself a USB server between each other.

I think that might be a little overuse of technology if it's two people in a hotel room sharing a USB over a network instead of just passing it to each other, but whatever.

I also believe that the USB can also be used for using your MiFi. So if you have one of those MiFis that's USB and you don't want to use it. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I envision this, if you're taking it with you, you're going to an event, maybe the event is at a... you work for a company, and you have a table at a conference, and you need to connect multiple people onto your own same network, it also would be able to fulfill that, and keep in mind, right, just because you have three switches, and actually, two of them are LAN, and one of them are WAN. So, if you wanted to connect this to their network, and you wanted to connect another switch to this WAN, you can actually have a nice little versatile travel router.

You could, but then when you start building a whole network, you know, this thing is going to run out of performance eventually, and you've got to get something bigger, you know. Small use, right? I'm sure it can handle a lot, but... You're not going to hook up a 16 port switch to this, I mean, right? That'd be kind of ridiculous.

But it is a one gigabit wireless router. So, so we don't know whether or not the chip in here can handle or process it. But look, my thing is this, it's not, I'm not telling people that you set up a portable network for four days on it, but we don't know that it won't work. But we do know that this is a nice little device for you to travel with, take it to a hotel, hook up your computer to it, and if they have an Ethernet connection, you can connect directly to it. It seems to be very versatile.

Yeah. And you know, I was just thinking, you must be able to connect to it yourself over Wi-Fi, because otherwise it wouldn't work with phones, right? It's got to work with phones.

Let's take a look.

Let's see. Look in the documentation.

Let me see. I'm powered up to a router will broadcast both 2.4 gig and 5g the gatekick jig 5 gig Wi-Fi signal using the SSID So you do have?

Yeah, that makes sense Yeah, so I think yes, you can you can watch porn on your iPad in the hotel room without the hotel knowing so well, let me ask you a question if you're traveling don't you already have downloaded porn? downloaded No, that's embarrassing. If you get caught at the airport, I mean, you know, it's bad enough like, you know, renting it on the hotel TV and getting it on the bill. Try to expense that. That's embarrassing.

Well, should it be used? Well, it's OK if you don't use your corporate credit card to book the room, right? I guess. But I think the main goal here is you have a travel router. It does what it has to do. It protects you from the network. Um, it has the ability to put a card in there. I believe you could also put it, uh, your like a, uh, uh, an SD card possibly more or maybe it's actually the SIM card, but we got to check. And, uh, it does have a lot of features in there, but it's, it's really does what you want it to do, right? You're traveling with it. It's protecting you. Uh, and it's capable of doing a Wamport and two LAN ports, as we said, and a USB. So. If you want to throw this into your luggage, it's great.

Yeah, that's it. I mean, in all seriousness, if you're traveling and you're going on some networks that you really shouldn't be trusting, and some of them you shouldn't even be using, if you must, and you probably must in a lot of cases, having something like this will give you a decent amount of protection. You know, it'll be on your own private network, it'll VPN through all that junk out to wherever you want it to connect to, and hopefully that's a safe place too. You'll be in much better shape.

I'll say this like if anybody else has used travel routers and They finish watching this unboxing and you want to throw some comments or details into Below we would love to see what what models you're using and how versatile your devices and how far you pushed it We would love to add that to the comments

Yeah, especially if you know one that's cheaper and works just as good because Adam shelled out the money for this one, but I want a cheaper one. So help me out.

And for those who find this information useful, we are taking people who are sponsoring episodes. So we would love that too.

That's right. We'll be happy to unbox your stuff. Anyway, all right, Adam, this has been fun. I forgot how much fun this is. We haven't done it for a while, but we learned something new.

I'll be traveling to a conference soon, so I will be testing this on the road, and maybe we can do a quick follow-up from the hotel room.

Yes, give us your impressions of it. I know you're not an impressionist, but, you know, you can give us what you think of the travel router.

Well, I do a good Joe Patti.

I'll bet you do. All right, Adam, it's been fun, as always. Everyone, thanks for watching. Let us know what you think. Drop us some comments on this. And if there's anything else you want to see Adam spend his money on and open up and show you. Take care. Thank you.