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The Kanex mySpot is a small, portable wireless router that can transform any Ethernet connection into a wireless Internet hotspot for up to 16 devices simultaneously. Connecting is a breeze: simply plug in an available Ethernet cable into the LAN port on the mySpot, and then plug the retractable USB cable into either a USB port on your laptop, or a USB adapter like your iPhone charger.
After making the physical connection, the mySpot springs to life, creating a small wireless signal that you can connect to with any Wi-Fi-capable device. While the mySpot doesn’t have 802.11n, we found that the 802.11b/g connection provided a fast-enough experience with a standard Internet connection; however, 802.11g connections have a maximum theoretical throughput of 54Mbps.
The mySpot settings webpage is not very well thought-out, leaving us confused about how to set the password.
Kanex does provide a way to protect your mySpot from anyone joining; however, the mySpot Settings webpage seems to be an afterthought. It’s not very well designed, and can leave even the most advanced users scratching their heads. For starters, you can change only the ending numbers of your SSID (access point name); the SSID you choose will always be prefixed by “Kanex mySpot-“. Next, the device password doesn’t appear able to be set. On the Kanex website, it says that you can choose a password that’s either 5 or 15 characters in length, but each time we tried to update the password, we were met with a “Length Invalid!” error message. The device also only supports WEP encryption. This is an older, less secure way of encrypting wireless transmissions, and it’s not widely used today. Lastly, you can only select between four broadcast channels (3, 6, 9, or 11). In order for the changes to be saved on the settings page, we had to click Submit multiple times before the mySpot finally saved the changes and restarted.
The bottom line. If you are looking for a small router that can be used while traveling with Wi-Fi-only devices, and don’t mind overlooking the issues that we had with the device’s settings, then look no further than the Kanex. It’s inexpensive, it works, and it’s extremely portable.
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