A while back, I found a topic in an RV forum pushing Visible.  And the topic made it VERY easy to find a usable router – BUY THIS ROUTER, DO THESE SETTINGS, GO DO STUFF.  Great!

The router was a GL-INET AR750S-EXT.  And it worked FAIRLY well (I’ll let the charging issues lay there). 

Sometime later, they found a setting modification that would remove the speed limitation on Visible.  Also good.

Unfortunately, while the GL-INET routers sort-of work OK, BUT I’m on my third one – the GL-300 died, and it looks like the AR750S died yesterday.  Which means I need another router.  And I’m tired of giving money to Gl-Inet for stuff that lasts just OVER a year, so I’m looking elsewhere…

Here’s what I need…

Router has to plug into a normal usb power supply, don’t care if it’s 1A, 2A, 3A – I’ve got ALL of them.

Once configured, the router has to enable me to plug the cell phone in and LEAVE IT IN, turn on the tethering on the cell phone, and HAVE IT WORK.  The cell phone is a data-only phone.  It never gets phone calls, it never takes pictures.  It just SITS THERE providing wifi from the router.  It may be providing streaming TV or it may be providing data for one of the computers, but that’s it’s job.

I’d like to have both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands.

It has to KEEP the phone charged.  It’s not as useful as it could be if the phone goes dead once a week.

And LAST, it has to accept the equivalent (don’t know EXACTLY what the line has to look like) of the Gl-Inet modification to the user data to remove the speed cap.  For the Gl-Inet routers, it’s a line added to SOMETHING, but I can’t provide more info ‘cause I’d have to go INTO the router from the computer and the #@*&^%$#@ router is DEAD.

But the line is: iptables -t mangle -I POSTROUTING 1 -j TTL --ttl-set 65

SO, to avoid having to give GL-Inet more money, what does TP-link have that will do what I need – and be more cost effective than Gl-Inet ‘cause otherwise it’ll be “the devil you know versus the unknown" problem.