How to Repeat Public Wifi Hotspot | Public Wifi Repeater – AR750 Review

Video Transcript

[00:01] Hey guys, hope you’re doing well. This is Dennis here, wanted to do a quick video for you. Uh, if you’re watching this, chances are you are probably looking to find out how to repeat a public hotspot. Typically hotspots, whether they’re free or paid if that comes through your ISP, they are either secured or not secured, meaning they require a password or don’t. Um, and the main piece behind this, um, that you should know about is the only reason or the only way that you’re going to be able to do this is if you essentially have a router that would allow you to bypass the captive portal. Now, what’s the captive portal? Um, essentially it’s a page that pops up when you try to connect to an isp or a hotspot that asks you for your email address or your name and email address, or maybe it’s a social media portion of it that you have to connect to be able to access the Internet.

[00:58] I know that I ran into that at books a million a couple of weeks ago. Um, if you’re in a coffee shop, it might pop up a page where you have to enter your name or something like that, airports have it as well, and that’s, that’s the, that’s the page that pops up that you have to be able to get around. Um, and typically the routers or the regular routers that people have, can’t bypass that and because they can’t essentially get that page to pop up and authenticate that page, they can’t connect to the signal of the hotspot, so they can basically extend that around the house. So the way that you’re going to be able to repeat this signal, whether that’s free or paid through your Isp, um, is to have a router that’s capable of bypassing the captive the captive portal. So I’ll just jump right into it.

[01:47] I, again, I’m making this video because I took, uh, about two weeks to get this set up from start to finish the tons of research looking for answers. I didn’t see any videos of anyone explaining anything about this. Um, so I decided, you know what, let me make a quick video. I figured let me see if I can help some people out so they can find what they need in one place rather than jumping in forums and trying to figure out a bunch of stuff and buying products that are not going to work for them like I did. So really quickly, again, since you only need a router that will allow that capability. Um, I went ahead and bought this particular router. I initially bought an extender and I knew about a couple of days after I ordered it on Amazon that it wasn’t going to work.

[02:30] Now it was like back to square one. I’ll keep it, but it wasn’t going to help me do what I needed to do. So I did more research, uh, figured out that I needed a router that has specific features to let me do what I needed to do. And um, so I essentially found this one, uh, I think you can see it’s called the GL-AR750. And this was from GL INET, uh, the reason why I went with this one, just to throw us a couple of specs out there just to have it in the video, um, so this particular router has or allows up to 300 megabits per second, um, that has dual band, so 2.4 GHZ as well as 5GHZ, which is good for kind of like future proofing stuff. You don’t want to get stuff that’s to outdated or might not work well with maybe future, uh, devices that you get.

[03:18] So wanting to make sure that’s something I got had that in place. And it also allows you to basically use a vpn. Um, and if you don’t know what a Vpn is, basically a server that allows you to run your traffic through it, kind of a middleman to kind of hide what you’re doing. It’s a better way of sort of a kind of surfing the internet more secure and just keeps your, your isp from seeing what you’re doing and that kind of stuff. And that’ll come into play a little later in the video. So I got this particular device, this worked for me and I kinda just want to go over a couple things about it. Um, but again, you need a router that allows you to bypass that. The reason why this works is because it allows you to do what’s called Mac cloning or Mac address clothing.

[04:03] So if you don’t know what a Mac address is, essentially it’s a serial number tied to your network card that basically, uh, it’s an identifier that isp or maybe you know, anybody that you connect to will know that that device is connected to the internet or that particular connection. So they can see how many devices, who’s on it, you know, they could see what traffic is going through it, how much that, how much bandwidth they’re using and they can control what sites you use and they can moderate stuff. So all that is done using your Mac address. So typically if you, let’s say you connected to your phone and you had a username and password. If you pay for an ISP that allows you to use their public hotspots, which is my particular case, and I’ll get into that, but if you have, even if it’s a free hotspot, let’s say a Mcdonald’s or something, they can see your Mac address, but if you’re trying to, let’s say repeat a free public hotspot, this is going to let you do that.

[05:03] Um, and if you wanted to go the Mac address way, this will allow you to do that. So the cloning, the way that works is, let’s say you connect to your, to the same Mcdonald’s hotspot using your phone, right? And you’re, you’re connected to the Internet, you’re using the internet, it’s working fine. They’ve tracked your Mac address and now they, they’re allowing you to connect to that in it because when you first connected to it on your phone, it probably popped up a page or you needed to go through that captive portal where there is checkoff terms and conditions or something like that and now you’ve authenticated that page. Now they let you use the Internet, right? So basically you’re trying to duplicate a device onto that network by saying, hey, this is a device that was the first one to authenticate. So don’t ask me about this captive portal page thing, right, because you already authenticated, so typically when you, once you already authenticate and won’t ask you to, to basically do it again.

[05:56] And that’s the key there. Um, lots of routers, again don’t have that capability. So if you try to repeat a signal with a regular router that doesn’t have particular features that allow you to bypass the capital portal, it’s not going to work because the captive porter page whenever come up, which means you can connect to the access point, which means you can’t repeat that signal in your house. So you can use a Mac adjusted cloning feature of this is very simple to use and I might work for you if, if, if, if the access point that you’re trying to connect to is looking at Mac addresses and typically they are maybe not 100 percent but they definitely are. But there are some isps that will ask you for a username and password. Right? So I have an isp that gives you a username, password, and allows you to use their public hotspot, so I guess free, free because you’re not paying additional, but you paid for the service Internet service so you have access to it.

[06:47] Um, so it asks you for a username and a password. Um, but it doesn’t have like an actual captive portal page, meaning that I was able to connect to two out of the three access points that are around me are hotspots I should say, that are around me. Um, but I was able to bypass the ones that have the captive portal page and there are ways to get around, uh, the ones that asked you for using my password. I just didn’t go that complete route, uh, played around with for a little bit. But because I worked for the other two, I was like, you know what, I’m not going to mess around with it so much. It’s basically the same company, but they have three different access points. Same source, but just different names. Um, so since I was able to get to the other ones, didn’t really have to go down that route, but you need this router.

[07:32] So this is half the battle right here is knowing what device and why so just by having this particular route or you can basically get this done. You’re halfway through, through the, uh, down the down the journey. So, um, a couple of other things that I want to mention. So when you’re trying to set this up, so let’s say you have a hotspot around your house, it’s called, I don’t know, DC, right? This hotspot and you’re trying to repeat that signal around your house. You would connect to that signal with this router. You would configure this route. You, you sign in to the router is a dashboard and configuration settings using the Ip address that comes with the router. And it’ll tell you what to enter in the actual manual you get or probably even on the box itself. Um, and you would sign on in there and you would try to connect to it.

[08:22] You would enter username and password if you have, if you don’t need you try to connect to it anyway, set it up and set it up as whisper mode. WISB mode. This is a big one because I was doing was called w e s and I won’t get into the specifics of it. Um, it can get a little complicated and again, this broader has just for those that are more advanced, has lots and lots of features. It allows you to basically connect to tons of different vpn companies using open vpn has open wrt and lead and a bunch of stuff. If you’re more advanced, I’m not, I just want to mention in of you’re more advanced and you’re wondering if it has that kind of stuff. So if you’re advancing, you want to do like hobby stuff. You can do the basic stuff and go crazy with it if you want to.

[09:03] But um, yeah, so if you connect to this device, make sure you’re using a WISP mode and that’s something you would use for public hotspots and even like hotels and this sort of thing. One of the things I mentioned to, I believe that you can do this with this particular router. I have not, I actually haven’t had it that long. Um, I’ll probably try it when I go to a hotel, but I’ve read about this particular product that you can, let’s say you’re in a hotel and you’re using, let’s say you paid for two days worth of Internet, right? Hotels will typically charge you per device that connects to the Internet so you could essentially connect to this. Connect this to the hotel, the hotel’s access point and then connect all your devices to this so it looks like there’s only one device connecting really there’s several devices, right?

[09:49] So this is another reason why you would use this. If you try it in a hotel, you would run into the captive portal issue as well. So you would need something like this. It’s essentially a travel travel route or powerful little travel route or um, so that’s that. Um, something else to mention. Um, I actually was able to repeat the signal and it worked perfectly fine for me, but an issue you’ll run into if you use things like Netflix and Hulu and maybe KODI or something like that, I don’t know. Um, and you have a chromecast connected to a TV and you’re streaming from a computer or a phone, you’re going to run into an issue where your isp, because it’s a free public hotspot and they don’t want tons of people juicing the hotspot and running their server costs and that stuff you can, um, you can actually set up a vpn with this one because if you don’t, the ISP will be able to see that you’re streaming from Netflix and Amazon prime and Hulu and they’re going to throttle it so much it would become unusable. So typically when I tried it, it would work for, I don’t know, maybe a couple of minutes on Netflix if I was streaming to the chromecast and then would just, it’d be done. But when I tried it on my computer with the VPN that have it will work perfectly fine on my computer, so I knew it wasn’t the, the Internet wasn’t slow or anything, it was just that the ISP can see that you’re streaming essentially through Netflix and they can throttle those particular sites or they just could see the amount of data that’s running through that device and throttle it that way. So the way to get around that is to get a vpn. I use a vpn.ht. I recommended it. It’s about five bucks a month. Super cheap and affordable. Um, and one thing to mention to the, the, the file that you download for your, you know, the setup for the computer or on an app for your phone.

[11:43] It’s very, very easy to use. I don’t like things we have to configure stuff and everything just gets so complicated. I’m super easy to use. You just enter username and password that you get. Once you subscribe and you select the location. So you can kind of, you know, if you want to look like you’re in Australia, you can do that. Um, but that’s important because that’s the only way that you’re going to be able to get around the throttling issues when you’re streaming those types of services. You would essentially get a vpn.ht subscription or anything else that you want and download what’s called an a .ovpn file from their website that they’ll give it to you, they’ll give to you and then you can upload it to the back end when you go into the Ip address of your router and you can upload it and it’s going to ask you for using a password that you use for your vpn.

[12:32] And then boom, you’re done. Um, the next step above that though is configuring your dns settings. Um, you can use, if you use your regular isp ones, if you don’t configure it, it’s gonna use the default ones from your isp. So I wouldn’t use that because it’s still not going to work. You’ll still get throttled. Um, so you can change it to either Google’s dns. So you can enter the googles Ip address there, which is on the VPN.ht website as well, um, or you can use opendns or you can ask for the dns Ip addresses of um, your, uh, particular vpn service. So I actually asked Vpn.ht for theirs a couple of days ago because I just got this setup, um, and their servers are under maintenance so I actually don’t have it, but if you just always wanted to work in the meantime, um, be able to repeat everything and then also have your stream work fine to Netflix and chromecast and that kind of stuff you can use the opendns ones and again, that’s also on the website in the same article, um, on the vpn.ht website if you decide to go that route. Um, I will post the link in the description to where to get this exactly. I paid, actually looked at the price yesterday as of the making of this video. I think it was 45 bucks that I paid and I think it says it’s $11 shipping. But this is very, very cool because then you can use this in any situation where you’re connected to a, a public hotspot whether it’s secured or not because it has its own firewall built in and that’ll keep them more secure when you’re searching. And then of course, like I mentioned, you can just install the vpn so every time I’m, this connects to the Internet, that particular isp that you’re trying to repeat or access point and it’ll automatically lower your vpn settings so that everything you do is secure, you don’t have to mess around with it.

[14:24] And then you can basically repeat any free hotspot signal and do a bunch of other things if you’re more advanced. So again, I’ll put the link in the description for this particular device. Um, so that you know exactly which one it is. And that’s, uh, that’s pretty much it. I might make a second video if you guys need to about the settings and how to configure in the back end. Again, it’s very simple, just whisper mode. You can upload a VPN and file download from the or whatever website that you’re using a or service are you using for your vpn service and that’s, uh, that’s pretty much it. Um, leave me any comments. If you have any questions I’ll, I’ll definitely comment and reply back and try to help you guys out. Again, the purpose of this video was just to have everything in one place, but you know, why you needed a particular things, um, and which particular device to download or to buy a few one to go this route because there nothing else online.

[15:18] And it took me awhile to set it up. It was like a little bit, a little project of mine. I was even on the roof seeing if I could repeat the signal from the Mcdonald’s down the road as a little project, but that would have been a lot bigger. I was looking at two directional antennas and all that stuff and I have a two floor home and I couldn’t. I still couldn’t see the, the, the Mcdonald’s and with a clear line of sight, even though it was about a mile away. So anyway, hope that helped again, like if you liked the video, thumbs down and a few, don’t like the video and comment and I’ll try to help you guys out and um, stay tuned for a couple more videos. And again, if I do make a second video video, you’ll see it on the, um, the caption pop up on this particular video, which you can click on and take you to the second video so you can see the settings, but it’s very, super simple. So, uh, hope you get it to work and if you do, comment below and let me know if that helped you out. All right guys, thanks for watching. See you in the next video. Bye.