[agwa]

Thanks.

Yes, it sounds like it will be challenging to fit everything in the power budget. Do you think there's a need to use this on battery power? Won't most people be using it in a hotel room? A wall wart that's compact and dual-voltage would work for me and would provide much more power than USB.

I'll also put in a pitch for at least two Ethernet ports, so you can use one for connecting to the hotel and another for your LAN, in case WIFI's not cutting it or you need to connect a non-WIFI device (in my case, a VoIP phone).

One usability problem which has vexed me is that most hotels force you through a captive portal, which doesn't work if you're routing all traffic over a VPN. (Some even make you do it every 24 hours!) My latest solution is a special Ethernet port that's on a separate subnet which isn't routed over the VPN. You use that for going through the captive portal and then you switch over to WIFI or another Ethernet port. I think a hardware switch to turn the VPN on and off would also be a good solution.

[rdl]

Yeah, a hardware switch for VPN/non-VPN. Two ether might make as much sense as one, and it gives you a lot of flexibility. Ultimately I'd like to see something better than dumb captive portals, too, so some kind of partnership with the roaming wifi pass providers might make sense.

For the power budget, I really want to be able to use this powered by my laptop's USB port (or a big usb battery) so when I'm at an airport or something I can safely use wifi without having to find a power socket. One option is using more power than USB, and having a battery which is charged via USB, but that would suck.

I believe everything except Tor can fit within the power budget, even with 2 normal and 2 lower power radios, though.