Recommended routers for airvpn?

[stevehere 0]

Hey guys, I am looking fir recommendations for a router to set up airvpn on it. I am a college student living on campus, so I’m using university wifi. The idea is, the router can send all connections to airvpn and can connect to university wifi (ie no internet cable). And lastly, hopefully not expansive. Thanks!

[SurprisedItWorks 49]

I have a dd-wrt travel router configured with Air via OpenVPN to operate with the 2.4GHz wifi in client mode to connect to hotel wifi and with 5GHz wifi then providing connections for all my devices.  So it's very much set up to do what you are trying to do.

My experience, however, has been that I can only connect successfully to maybe 40% of hotel wifi systems, generally the simple systems of older/smaller hotels with wifi  "locked" so that a password is required for  the initial connection.  Hotel systems with "captive portals" (unlocked initial connection leading to a login/registration page) sometimes let me connect a phone via wifi, get logged in through the captive portal,  then disconnect the phone and connect the router with the router set up to clone the phone's MAC address.  However, even this procedure fails for most hotels with captive portals, particularly for large, modern hotels.  What this means for you is that if your college uses a modern system with a captive portal, which seems likely, your investment in a router may be a dead end.  So have a backup plan to put the router to good use elsewhere.
 

If you are looking at dd-wrt for router firmware (year-old Air-setup how-to: https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=321856, OpenVPN guides including one on updating configs to OpenVPN 2.5: https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=327398), the dd-wrt community most often recommends the Netgear R7800 X4S Nighthawk router (setup guide: https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=320614 ), which can sometimes be found used for a reasonable price.  The older, less-expensive but less-capable Netgear R7000 is frequently mentioned as well.  I use a Linksys WRT1900ACSv2, but the WRT family's wifi drivers are fussy, and dd-wrt builds have to be chosen VERY carefully for them.  Not recommended.  Routers with Atheros wifi hardware (forum: https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=28) are generally favored by the community.  Ignore the builds recommended by the poorly maintained dd-wrt router database.  Get your dd-wrt info from the forums.

If you don't want to go down the dd-wrt rabbit hole, one option is those Asus routers that feature the AsusWRT OS.  It offers OpenVPN capability natively, but I believe - I'm not an expert - you'll need to upgrade the firmware to AsusWRT-Merlin (https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/, and check for Merlin compatibility before buying) to get Policy Based Routing so that you can have one wifi subnet/SSID with vpn and another without.

[Air4141841 23]

I use netgate products and they work 100% 

[nexsteppe 23]

I second recommendation for netgate appliances (and pfSense).  Even their more basic routers are nearly enterprise-level options for home users.

[Unknown User 2]

Buy a netgate router or build your own router and run pfSense, you would love it!