My Mobile HomeLab! (Travel Router with Proxmox, Docker, and OpenWRT)

[@jasestu]

The nerd in me wants to do this, but having this kind of hardware just for when I'm travelling (only a few times a year in my case) seems silly when my phone can run OpenVPN back to home, get an LTE signal and run a WiFi hotspot.

[@F16_viper_pilot]

Yeah, and the device is so bulky too. I tried the Network Chuck Raspberry Pi option, which works great, but found OpenWRT to be a bit unintuitive to properly configure at my destinations. I later found the GL-MT1300 (Beryl) VPN wireless travel router. It’s small and a breeze to configure. I can easily connect to a VPN and all our devices have a secure connection while traveling.

[@10leej]

Even easier? Mesh vpn provided over wireguard.

[@rationalbushcraft]

I see this as being a good home option. I am sick of comcast cost and that is the only option I have unless I want to give Musk more money. But I do get a good Verizon signal here. The problem is this will be kindo of costly after buying everything needed if I find I don't like it.

[@TechnoTim]

Good point! This setup also allows you to run anything locally too on that network, even off the grid!

[@DavidM2002]

@@F16_viper_pilot Such an interesting comment. I thought I'd have a look at the device in this video to see if it suited me but I'm not technically inclined enough to configure it. So, I'm going to stick with the GL-MT1300 Beryl that I already have. Thanks for confirming my decision.

[@RaidOwl]

I dare you to bring it to Houston ;)

[@JeffGeerling]

Has to bring it to St. Louis too!

[@RaidOwl]

@@JeffGeerlingroad trip!

[@TechnoTim]

I’ll just head south and pick up Jeff!

[@joeswheat]

Okay, you putz.🥱

[@theSurfinBirdie]

instead of a Barrelplug i would love to see a usb-c connetion to power that thing

[@michaelfitzgeraldnet]

Adafruit do have a programmable. Usb-c PD to barrel cable. I use one to run 20v from an anker power brick to a mikrotik when on the road

[@fatchobok0]

I just got back from a trip where I used a GL-AXT1800 travel router. It natively runs a build of OpenWRT and has a USB port that you can plug a mobile modem into, and it's USB-PD powered. I personally just use it to be in the middle of my devices and public WiFi and to tunnel back home. Definitely would recommend something like this if you wanted a portable, dedicated firewall, and were comfortable enough to just run any other necessary services on laptop or other machine via container or VM. Pretty decently light of a loadout if you are already carrying a laptop on you.

[@travisaugustine7264]

Might have to get one of these to act as the router/modem/server for my camper when I am spending the summer months living in a USFS campground (off the grid of course). No I'm not camping for 3 months...I live/work there so I do a lot of things that you do at home. Watch TV, play video games, etc. I just get to live off the grid in some absolutely beautiful scenery.

[@oztechsolutions]

As much as i’d like to tinker with networking and computer devices I think i will stick with my GL.iNet travel router which also runs on openwrt and also it is lighter and has a smaller footprint which is both ideal for “travel”. Great video by the way as usual.

[@arunkhan4951]

I agree. The GL.iNet devices are pretty cool and practical to take along on airplane travels.

[@F16_viper_pilot]

Totally agree! I used to use a D-Link, then built a Raspberry Pi router (thanks Chuck!), but raw OpenWRT is not the most intuitive to configure when changing locations. The GL-MT1300 (Beryl) is so easy to configure; simply love it!

[@oztechsolutions]

@@F16_viper_pilot we have exactly the same model. I could go for the more expensive and faster models like the AX version but the fact that I won’t normally transfer large amounts of file within the “personal network” when travelling and the fact that the hotel network be it wired or wireless is limiting speed anyway then the faster speed of the AX version is not really required for my use case.

[@F16_viper_pilot]

@@oztechsolutions Totally agree. The model I have is perfect for my needs for the exact reasons you state. I also created a cloud-based wireguard vpn to protect all our network traffic from eavesdroppers.

[@stevenpalermo7549]

​@@F16_viper_pilotI have a mango that I've been using for a few years. Upgraded to the beryl last week and it's great as well! I wish it was a little smaller but it's still doable for most travel situations.

[@rysterstech]

This thing shreds my Pi4 based router. Mine is not as clean as it requires a massive wifi adapter for the wan connection, and only has one LAN port, and it only has 2 wifi nics total. Speaking of nics, if you want a higher performance wifi adapter that works in both AP and client mode (not at the same time), i bought a PAU0D from panda wireless, its operates at 866 megabits at wireless AC speeds and has dual 5db antennas that are removable. It works just by installing kmod-mt76x2u in openwrt and you have a great signal. The travelmate package also helps with managing multiple wwan connections automatically and can even auto connect to open hotspots.

[@jaapkamstra9343]

Ah that's a cool idea! Having a portable nas/firewall/router/server would be very helpful for me on the road.

[@GuilhermeTheobald]

I made one of this forbidden router on one of this mini PCs with Intel n5105 and Proxmox and for the first 3 months it worked great, until it started to crash. Since the router was unavailable, the only way to get everything up and running was to restart the machine. Since I can't be at home to restart everytime, I just abandoned proxmox and installed pfsense directly on the host. And bought a 5700U mini pc for the rest.

[@Sfeclicel]

Intel n5105 are well known for this kind of problems, especialy the boxes from aliexpress, i had one myself the entire box will power reset at random hours, turned out to be a faulty capacitor, others report that on this intel chip proxmox randomly restarts vm's and so on, i did go on a deep rabbit hole

[@evilmansin]

TPLINK pocket router (TL-WR902AC, TL-WR810N TL-WR710N, TL-WR703 or TL-WR700N(some got left in hotel rooms)) has been my go to for travel running open-wrt. I've been wanting a portable lil lab for the road, but after your help building my NUC cluster with proxmox I'm definitely going to be toting around one of these soon. Luckily I am pretty sure I recognise that 150 N usb wifi adapter form my old Rpi2 days and have a few laying around still If not the right one, one of the old TP pocket guys in client mode in the WAN port wont take up too much more space in my backpack. Love your channel, thank you for all the thorough yet concise vids.

[@RyouConcord]

Looking to have some kind of virtualization in my van camper conversion... but with my router being a separate device, I think. This is a really attractive setup.

[@GodAtum]

Very interesting. I’d like to do something similar but need battery power. A mobile router with a local SIM is nice and portable for the beach

[@mt_kegan512]

There's always been 1 thing stopping me. Pretending you don't have LTE or Ethernet LAN and just WiFi (which is most common... Like a hotel for instance) how can you sign into the captive portal to use their wifi LAN as your wireless WAN?

[@ZippyDooDa435]

Spoof MAC address of the router on your laptop, sign into the portal, stop spoofing, then connect the router to the WiFi. The captive portal is just getting authentication and then allowing a MAC address based on that.

[@mishasawangwan6652]

even easier than spoofing just setup a router in station mode, first client that logs in can complete the captive portal. i do this using mikrotik. i have several of various sizes map lite (size of a matchbook) / map / hap ax lite.

[@MortenEghj]

Same question here, how to use it as a wi-fi gateway in a hotel.

[@mt_kegan512]

@@ZippyDooDa435 thx for the reply! Great method

[@JonathanSwiftUK]

I have two similar machines, one of them from Topton, and they weigh a ton, so it will be very different to taking that very lightweight Linksys plastic router. If you were driving probably doesn't make much difference, but if you have this in your backpack and are walking a lot you will definitely notice the difference.

[@Voigt_Analytics]

Wow, that's pretty complicated. But a very cool project. I love it. I'm too lazy for that. One wrong setting and it could all go wrong. The GL.Inet Beryl AX travel router has everything I need. With OpenWRT. Special services are in a Raspberry packed, available via VPN to my home or temporarily hosted at my hosting provider on a "holiday server".

[@johnsmith8981]

This is awesome! I have an old PC I set up as my router the same way but I love this form factor.

[@Hydro3D]

I was just thinking of doing this last night. You are on your game!

[@NickMach007]

Sweet! Love to see more on this topic as you have a chance to travel with it. And love seeing Wendell pop up. Level 1 Techs is one of my favorites

[@mrsnw]

Openwrt is the goat!!! Been using it under proxmox for years now. Hope it works great for your case

[@sysadmin-info]

As always excellent explanation. Thanks for the presentation. It has a lot of possibilities and it is good to know that such device even exists.

[@suswiththehomies]

In my personal opinion, this is your COOLEST project yet! I've been using a Wi-Fi Pineapple as my mobile router, but I love the horsepower and IO that comes with your setup. This may have convinced me to take the plunge, we shall see...

[@twon4212]

Tim are you spying on me? 🤣i swear the past couple videos you've done are exactly what i've thought and then built

[@hermanvandrie6503]

A wireless nic that has dual radio can broadcast the same network on both radios. You just need to configure 2 wireless network interfaces in OpenWRT wireless and configure each for their own band.

[@GrandmaRob]

Nice video and gives many ideas for possibilities with proxmox and such. Travel router sounds like a must have for any home laber.

[@adamtwo]

If you want to save some resources you can run openwrt in lxc container. Any way great video Tim 😁

[@MidianNiles]

Hello Techno Tim. I too have worked on expanding my secured mobile network; I also got my start with NetworkChuck's RPI router video. Like you, the most difficult challenge was finding a 5Hz wifi adapter, which could work with OpenWRT. I'm happy to say, after a lot of trial & error, I found a USB wifi adapter that works! I've tested the rig with said 5Hz wifi and it's amazing. If you and your following are interested, let me know. I can try putting together a makeshift basic write up, providing the hardware & system setup. Thanks for this video Techno Tim! I feel much better knowing I'm not the only 'tinker-tech' who faced-off with OpenWRT and USB wifi compatibility 😉

[@W0JMR]

It would be cool to be able to use a cellular phone hotspot as the internet source. Maybe a follow up video?

[@F16_viper_pilot]

Love Protectli, but way too bulky for my travel needs. I made a Network Chuck router, which I used for a while, but switched to a very compact GL-MT1300 (Beryl) VPN wireless travel router. The Beryl is much easier to configure than OpenWRT, and the device is about the same size as a cased Rasberry Pi. Switching to a VPN is a breeze. Love this device….it always goes with me!

[@szymex22]

Are you using LTE with the Beryl? Do the LTE dongles work well enough?

[@JohnPMiller]

USA price as of June 18, 2023: $681.99. (Not including sales tax.) Breakdown: $652.00 Protectli $29.99 USB WiFi adapter It's good value for the price, but it's not cheap.

[@chrisumali9841]

thanks for the demo and info, have a great day

[@LarsBerntropBos]

The documentation for the device dhow it has a sata port and 2.5 inch mount inside, so you can expand the storage

[@JohnPMiller]

2:54 He's already using the SATA connector for his 2.5" 1TB Samsung drive. You can see it mounted to the bottom faceplate.

[@LarsBerntropBos]

Ah, I had not seen, thought the Samsung 1TB was an M.2

[@opticalip1]

I have a similar setup but I have Proxmox with the primary VM using pFsense.. Have 1 port for wan, and created a bridge with the 3 for lan and left 1 open/untouched for management for direct access to proxmox.

[@BenjaminWheeler0510]

This is a really good idea! I also like the idea of bringing extra services with you on the road, like plex

[@sequence0902]

Hey Tim, just wanna let you know that this setup will be quite finicky and performance will be lackluster. I have tested both OPNSense + Proxmox + TrueNAS setup on my J4125 as well as a Xeon-D and none of them can route Wireguard (OPNSense) at gigabit speeds. Of course since it's a travel router you don't really have any issues with gigabit speeds. Another thing to note is that the iGPU requires quite a bit of commandline tinkering to be passed into the containers so even media decoding is gonna be quite complicated. In short, I'd recommend against this setup and just stick to an OpenWRT travel router and setup a tunnel back home so you can use all your services as long as Internet is speedy.

[@acollins319]

I love this idea, but I had an idea to use a mini pc for something like this. It would give me a lot of lab power on the go to run vm's instead of running them on my laptop.

[@Marc.Google]

Great tutorial, Tim!

[@stentoft7600]

Holly moly all in one👍

[@WolfEmerald214]

I dare you to build a low power efficient gaming / streaming pc

[@dnddl9976]

Yayy! first! Love you Techno Tim! Your videos and documents are really great and my homelab got better thanks to your videos :)

[@voodoovinny7125]

Expensive!

[@rajilsaraswat9763]

Looks like an overkill as a travel router. Gl-inet devices run openwrt and smaller in size if all one needs internet on the go.

[@bingebinge3722]

No, it is not an overkill at all. I have both. GL inet work fine as long as you don't try to achieve high band width over VPN running on the router.

[@JeffGeerling]

But not overkill as a travel homelab! ;)

[@dj-aj6882]

Now I would like to see a local Nextcloud instance that mirrors the main server off and online and sync all services!

[@savirien4266]

pretty sure they had a mobile home lab on breaking bad lol

[@gardnerjp1]

A great alternative to OpenWRT would be RouterOS

[@Rama_Guru]

Very nice, I do like the Protli. As protron recommend it

[@Bill_the_Red_Lichtie]

Hey Tim, I think you have to differentiate between "Self Hosted" and "Home Lab". You're device is a self hosted "Mobile Network Integration Device" (?), I don't think you will be experimenting on it while on the go ;-)

[@hazemsoussi5309]

Très créatif

[@joeylockie]

Have been looking to get one of these maybe second hand one day

[@paulmaydaynight9925]

just buy an older bare bones model directly from Ali as the UK resellers are exceptionally greedy with their pricing ￡130.67 "Intel N100 Celeron N5105/N5100 Soft Router Fanless Mini PC 4x Intel i226 2.5G LAN HDMI pfSense Firewall Appliance ESXI AES-NI"

[@DigitalIndependent]

I am looking into a Nanopi r6s. Much smaller, lots of punch, can even run off grid from a PowerBank. I like the idea of the video, but I would go another way :)

[@noahvandijck]

Maybe take a look at the GL inet Slate AX

[@CaptainBalou]

I really like the all in one approach. I'm searching such an appliance but with dual m.2 slots for a mirror. But i don't find appliances like that. 2x m.2 but no SIM or vice versa. I wonder if that exists somewhere or not? Any hints here?

[@MarcMcRae]

Brilliant!

[@slycordinator]

It's confusing that the "products in this video" links begins with a different Protectli router from the one in the video. The one link to uses the J4125 and gigabit ports compared to the J6412 and 2.5 gigabit ports for the device in the video. Edit: Well, now the link has been updated.

[@e_rawk]

Why do I spend more money every time I watch your videos, Tim? :)

[@TechnoTim]

Hey man! SorryNotSorry!

[@jacobnoori]

What is the model number of the cellular card inside the unit?

[@mr_trex9106]

Very good but unfortunately expensive.

[@lordgarth1]

Point?

[@no1unorightnow]

Do you have a guide somewhere on how you did the Linksys setup referenced at 0:49?

[@BensTechLab]

Very cool. Can OpenWRT join a "captive portal" wifi network like you see in hotels or restaurants?

[@actng]

impressive

[@gearboxworks]

Nice video. Curious though, what do you travel for, and how often?

[@stucorbishley]

You mentioned QuickSync for transcoding, do you have that working from inside a VM? I’ve had trouble a few times getting access to the igpu, if it’s via LXC I’m sure it’s no problem. Am I missing something or do you have to pass through the igpu (leaving proxmox without video output)? Thanks for another great video!

[@ozb2006]

Nice!!!

[@brightplastik]

Hi Tim! First of all I want to thank you so much for the insight. Since I bought a second hand chinese firewall (no-brand intel 3865U 6x Gigabit RJ45) , I realized there's so much going on with the several possible implementations. Too much, I'd say! Is there an article in which you guide through the setting of the internal NICs? I think I really need some help here. I'm stuck at the point in which you can log into openwrt, but of the 6 (maybe 5 remaining) ethernet ports there is no sign in the "Interfaces" tab. I only have eth0 and eth1, paired (I guess) with the net0 and net1 that were created following the guide by i12bretro you linked. How do I setup the physical RJ45 ports to act like WAN and LAN ports of the Openwrt VM? I reckon I can play with 5 of the total 6, since vmbr0 with enp1s0 will be bonded to the proxmox UI, am I right? And eventually I should be able to remove the old interfaces and use the new ones withou loosing access to the VM, right? But how? Is there a forum to discuss these defidencies of mine?

[@sheilaocc1028]

is there a way I can just buy this off of you already completed? I understand none of this but need one for my trailer since I work from home but we are constantly traveling and our WiFi hotspot isn’t enough.

[@RizalAliyuddin]

Is it just me, or did @TechnoTim skip the part about installing docker? Or is that step implied when he installed Portainer in the LXC?

[@HRKnight]

Meanwhile I’ve pissed off the aibnb person plugging in my network and my wife for even spending time on any of this instead of enjoying where we are on vacation 😂

[@KuroganeX3]

i got myself Intel J6413, HUNSN RJ09, AES-NI, 6 x Intel 2.5GbE I226-V LAN, Console, for 261 euro which is barebone but i got drive ram and everything at home so i saved 200 euro in 'barebone' protecli

[@kevfei]

never had a problem with realtek products???

[@baydencorney1210]

Can I ask how you got OpenWRT to work with the Intel wifi 6 PCIe card? I have one hooked up to a machine running OpenWRT and for the life of me I don't know how to make it work.

[@jonathan.sullivan]

1:45 J6412* ;)

[@jeroenrevalk]

Cool. What if you are connecting to an "open" wifi with an captive portal? The first device behind your router will get the popup screen and login?

[@lasbrujazz]

I was thinking, instead of separate Pi-Hole VM, why not AdGuard Home directly inside OpenWrt?

[@TechnoTim]

That also works! I am just a huge fan on pihole!

[@ZhechenZhu]

How does some of the new arm based sbcs compare against these x86 boxes? e.g. RK3588 seems to have good performance and 7nm fab. should be more efficient then these x86 boxes. I own an Nano Pi R6C but haven't put together a server on it yet. Would interesting to see the capability of these new boards and possible server/cluster configuration.

[@mihneaaleman193]

Does anyone know if protecli vaults support intel wifi 6 adapter?

[@MotFPS]

Why not run pihole as a docker?

[@hellminateur]

so i was wondering if it would be powerful enough to do 1080 60fps srt encoding since it seams like the perfect solution for a travel live stream if powered from a battery

[@theyoutubes4249]

Can you access the SMS messages on the Protectli device?

[@Qzbub]

Freebsd not having driver support for most wireless nics is such a disappointment

[@TechnoTim]

agreed

[@Costel8294]

Hello and thanks for everything.I have a question for you.What its best software nas to install on proxmox for photos as google photos?Thanks on advance

[@wheelbarrow2803]

Where does one get a cheap sim card for testing? Did not see a link in the video details.

[@welchbop]

Are those Celerons showing thir age yet? I feel like the new N305 are looking better for those mobile routers

[@QuantumKurator]

Step One - Get an RV or MiniHome to put this in

[@griffjrg]

Does anyone know how to configure a generic consumer router with OpenWRT similar to the GL.iNet so that it can accept WIRELESS WAN and not wired like tim does? I almost never have access to an ethernet port but I always have access to wireless wifi networks.

[@overflowdj1625]

From LUCI: NETWORK -> WIRELESS -> SCAN ... Join (Choose your AP etc etc) ... This will create a WWAN.

[@aGGeRReS]

Would there be any problems while connecting this kind of device to the hotel/office/library networks where in order to gain access you have to click on some landing page, input your id/room number/phone number, or do any of this kind of things?

[@natehein6225]

Tim, greetings! I have a proxmox server running pfSense with hardware passthrough, Unifi Network Controller, and Home Assistant. Is there a performance advantage to running virtual network interfaces between these 3 servers within a proxmox environment rather than sending traffic out to a switch and then back into a VM such as pfSense? This is just an example, but other servers/containers like Loki or Graphana, et. al. I'm thinking this might make an interesting video.

[@m19mesoto]

you can do all this with Mikrotik. I don't see reason why would I chose OpenWRT, also in Mikrotik you can run Docker sort of. It has great kvm support and qemu-agent is there too.

[@offgridtechnical6191]

Nice setup, this would be perfect for an off-grid setup. One Question,...when you decided to use proxmox, why didn't you use a pfsense vm rather then openwrt? Did I miss the reason? Thanks!

[@TechnoTim]

Thanks! I did need to use OpenWRT to create an access point with OpenWRT. I don't think that pfsense has drivers for most NICs to do this. LMK if you find something different!

[@offgridtechnical6191]

​@@TechnoTimThanks for the reply, I'm trying to do something similar minus the cellular end, using an HP EliteDesk 800 mini form factor, and have its internal wifi connect to my phone hotspot (wan), and its Ethernet as (lan)...and a USB dongle for access point, was going to track down an adapter that would work with pfsense, I have a handful I could to try, but didn't even think of openwrt as an alternative, thanks for the video!

[@mrpheo]

Any idea if traffic between those 2.5gb ports operates at line rate? or does it have to traverse the CPU? would love to use this as a travel router/2.5gb switch for a portable lab of lattepanda sigmas :)

[@bugzugke680]

How much is it 😢?

[@gjkrisa]

I installed proxmox then pfsense to a box like this. I used pci pass through and the downside to this is I have a port dedicated to just proxmox. How do I do this so that the pfsense lan port also can access proxmox.

[@gjkrisa]

Do I do wan port pci pass through and the lan side as the vm bridge

[@tvojejbabkydedko]

since you are not powering it from a battery pack, power usage doesn't matter

[@cameroncrossley2312]

Until you have to start worrying about the power bill with all of your toys plugged in.

[@EngineerK]

Anybody try this with some Aliexpress type hardware that is a bit less spendy? I need this for my RV homelab / media server. Links appreciated if you have.

[@zuluman100]

🖖🤯🤓 Nice

Cute, but laptop with 5g card would be even better, but it's not for MAC users

[@squalazzo]

MHomeLab

[@benjaminshtark5977]

but why??? just get laptop like macbook pro with bunch of docker images with all u need and conect via hotspot on phone, useless video

[@TechnoTim]

That only protects one device

[@benjaminshtark5977]

@@TechnoTim put OpenVPN docker image on laptop and make it hostpot + all other services, no need to bring with you brick :D you can allow other to access internet thru your laptop. anything and everything you run on that box, you can do on laptop.

[@Smumpism]

Pretty lame for you to post on TikTok saying you built this and "came up" with the idea then coming to this video and seeing its just a device you purchased.

[@Mrfizzledeggs]

What is an upstream router?

[@Kryptstar_mack]

this kind of setup is cool, but most places don't have a LAN port when traveling. Also, if the hotels are a chain hotel or whatever, they have Rogue AP spoof detection to prevent you from extending their wifi network. That mean your best bet is to just use the LTE function(4/5G) of the router in most cases, or just tether from your phone and use wireshare to your home. I love the protectli device, sadly there are many options that are a lot cheaper with good ratings on Aliexpress now.

[@tmitche7687]

Hey Tim, like others great idea solved for my travels. Started on this build. Any chance the config files for the OpenWrt could be made available?