Travel router
A travel router is a pocket Wi-Fi router that creates a private network wherever you are, so cameras, phones and laptops can connect to each other reliably.
Venue Wi-Fi is often slow, crowded or set up so devices can't see each other. A travel router solves that by bringing your own network: a small battery- or USB-powered router that broadcasts a private Wi-Fi network for your kit. It can share an internet connection — from venue Wi-Fi, an Ethernet port or a phone — or simply link devices together.
For wireless tethering, it gives cameras and the phone a stable network that you control.
How it works
The router creates a network, hands out addresses, and lets devices on it talk to each other. Many can also join another Wi-Fi network and share it, or take internet from a USB-tethered phone. Because you control it, there's no client isolation blocking cameras from the phone, and you can choose 2.4 or 5 GHz to suit the camera.
An example: two shooters in a ballroom
Two photographers at a gala join their cameras to a travel router in their kit bag. The cameras, the phone running the tether and a laptop all see each other, regardless of how busy the hotel's Wi-Fi gets.
Travel routers and CloudTether
CloudTether's Wi-Fi set-up recommends a shared network — a phone hotspot, a travel router or a studio router — so the phone keeps internet for uploads and several cameras can connect at once (see access point vs station mode). Join each camera in its remote/tether Wi-Fi mode, then connect in the app; enter the camera's IP address if discovery fails. Uploads go over the router's internet if it has one, or the phone's mobile data. See travel routers for photographers.
Power and placement
Keep the router close to where you shoot and powered from a bank for long days. Walls and crowds weaken the signal quickly.
Tips and common mistakes
- Give the network a name and password you'll recognise on a camera's small screen.
- Turn off client isolation in the router settings.
- Test the whole kit on the router before the event.
Put it into practice
CloudTether tethers your camera to your phone and delivers every shot to the cloud, live as you shoot — no laptop.