GLi GL-AR300M mini router - simple, portable VPN (Amazon Fire Stick etc)

[evilsatan]

Recently I started to play with my Fire TV Stick again, I decided to scrap the builds and set up from scratch. One problem (which also existed with the builds) is how many add-ons are blocked or fail to load, sometimes because they have been blocked by the UK (e.g. http://www.ukispcourtorders.co.uk/).

As most know, the answer is to use a VPN but I don't want all my LAN traffic passing over a VPN and the fire stick will install the PIA android app but won't actually work. In the case of the stick in my room I installed CCProxy on one of my servers, connected PrivateInternetAccess to that server and used my server as the proxy in the Kodi settings on the Fire Stick.

Problem is I have a stick I travel with, this led me to look for a portable router which could be configured with a VPN. My initial thought was to find one that can be flashed with DD-WRT/OpenWRT, I remembered TP-Link had some mini routers but it seems they do not have sufficient memory for VPN but then I stumbled upon the AR300M which has OpenVPN built in already. It arrived yesterday and it is tiny! Very fast to configure, in fact several settings I intended to set up were pre-configured such as uncommon subnet (x.x.8.1) and DHCP for WAN IP which allows me to connect to most routers with an ethernet cable and then send LAN or WLAN traffic over the VPN. It also has a repeater mode if you want a wireless link to the router providing internet.

At first I couldn't get it to work, it would connect to my network fine but any device connected to the mini router would connect, get a valid IP but could not access the WAN. Also after uploading my PIA OpenVPN files I could select the OVPN file, enter my login details but it wouldn't connect. A reset resolved both problems and now it auto-connects the VPN when powered up. The device is powered by microUSB so can probably be powered from a TV or router USB port, I always carry an iPad charger in my bag so no need for another power supply.

Check it out here:
https://www.gl-inet.com/ar300m/

Would be interested to hear what others use, with the router and a configured fire stick you can have a truly portable media system.