Setting up ASUS RT-AC51U in hotel

[pengjn]

Hi guys,

A while since I've been on the forums, and embarrassingly given that I used to be Cisco certified, but anyhoooo....

I'm staying in an apartment hotel in Dubai, and I am trying to setup an ASUS RT-AC51U, which has VPN support, and therefore I should be able to watch BBC iPlayer on all my devices. When you connect a device to the hotel WiFi it pops up a web browser dialogue, asks you if you're a guest or some other option, then on the next page it asks for your room number and surname.

I plugged the WAN port of the ASUS box into the LAN port of the hotel room router, and left the ASUS WAN-Internet with default settings, i.e. Automatic IP. To my surprise the ASUS box acquired a 10.x.x.x IP and said that the internet was connected. However, it won't connect to the NTP server to update the system clock, and clients connected to the ASUS box over WiFi can't access the Internet, so something is not well. I tried changing the WAN settings to PPOE, and tapped in my hotel room and surname, but (unsurprisingly to my mind), no joy. The internet LED is flashing, but in the manual it says that LED can only be in on or off mode, not flashing.

Any support much appreciated.

Cheers
Jimbo

 

[Avalon]

Running OpenVPN on a single core MIPS based router will be ridiculously slow, IPSec slightly less so, but I suspect you're going to find this is a problem. Depending on how your hotel is authenticating, my suggestion would be to try and authenticate a wired device (not the router) and then set-up the router in AP mode and cloning the MAC of the authenticated device. TBH if this is a short term gig and that's all you have, i'd be running local apps on each device where possible.

 

[pengjn]

Running OpenVPN on a single core MIPS based router will be ridiculously slow, IPSec slightly less so, but I suspect you're going to find this is a problem. Depending on how your hotel is authenticating, my suggestion would be to try and authenticate a wired device (not the router) and then set-up the router in AP mode and cloning the MAC of the authenticated device. TBH if this is a short term gig and that's all you have, i'd be running local apps on each device where possible.

That's really helpful Avalon, thank you. One reason to run the VPN is for TV services (paid for, but not accessible from foreign countries, I guess for licensing reasons), and I guess if the video content is coming through the VPN router, then it's gonna suck performance wise, as you point out, so I think it's sensible to return the box. The other use case is to authenticate game permission on my Oculus, which I guess it might be possible to run apps on, but I think you need to setup something called 'side loading', and I'd prefer not to. I looked at sharing my Nord VPN connection from my MacBook over WiFi, but for some reason Nord VPN doesn't support that functionality. I noticed that the FreeVPN client does support WiFi sharing, so for the Oculus use case, I'll try that. I just googled that the Oculus Quest 2 supports Ethernet too, so if I can't get WiFi VPN sharing working from my MacBook, then I'll try the cable for authentication, then disconnect once the game is running.

PS. How TF did Oculus shrink the processing power needed for VR into a headset?!? I was on overclockers a lot in 2016 when I built my VR rig for my Rift, it had (has - it's in storage in the UK for the moment), an EVGA GTX 980 Ti hybrid water cooled card, and just about had enough oomph. Amazing. Moore's Law I guess. Geeez, I've just thought about it properly, despite learning about it 28 years ago...that's 5 years of doubling, so 2 to the power of 5 (years), so....erm 32 times more power for the same price...? Or am I talking, as usual, nonsense?