Vault Wi-Fi (travel router)

Applies to Shield Vault only

Shield Vault includes its own Wi-Fi access point — designed to be packed in a bag with Shield and used as a travel router at hotels or short stays. At home, this Wi-Fi stays off; your home modem provides Wi-Fi and Shield filters everything that goes through it. The page below controls when Shield's own Wi-Fi is on.

Download this guide as a PDF

Wi-Fi Power

Turn Shield Wi-Fi on or off. When it's on, devices that join Shield's Wi-Fi connect through Shield's protection.

At home, Shield Wi-Fi should be off. Turn it on only as the first step of the travel cycle (see below), and turn it off again the moment you're back home and connected through it.

Caution

Don't turn Shield Wi-Fi on at home unless you're about to pack Shield for travel. When Shield Wi-Fi is on while you're home, nothing on either network reaches the internet — not the modem's Wi-Fi, not WOMBATS Wi-Fi. Shield is the access point and the home modem's DHCP is off, so the two can't both serve clients at once.

Caution

Don't turn Shield Wi-Fi off while you're travelling. The Shield UI is reachable only over the connection you're using to read it — turn the Wi-Fi off at a hotel and you'll cut your own connection, with no way back in until you reconnect Ethernet to your home modem.

Name & Password

Pick the network name people see when they join, and the password they use to connect. Use Show to reveal the current password. Save Name and Save Password apply each separately.

Wi-Fi passwords must be 8 to 63 characters.

Frequency Band & Channel

2.4 GHz usually gives better range; 5 GHz usually gives faster speeds.
Channel can be left on Auto (Shield picks a good one) or set Manually.
Save Band and Save Channel apply each change.

Using Shield as a travel router

Shield's Wi-Fi is designed to be packed in a bag. Here's the round trip — home, on the road, and home again.

1. Before you leave home. Turn Shield Wi-Fi on from this page, then power Shield off (Admin page → Shutdown) right away. Pack it in the magnetic-lid box it arrived in, along with its power adaptor and Ethernet cable.

Once Wi-Fi is on, no device can reach the internet until Shield is powered off — so flip the switch and shut down without lingering. The home modem's DHCP is off (Shield is the access point), so the home network won't work while Shield is away either; it's worth powering the home modem off too.

2. At a hotel or AirBnB. Plug Shield's Ethernet cable into the modem's yellow (LAN) port or a wall Ethernet port. Power Shield on. After a moment, your WOMBATS Wi-Fi network appears in the Wi-Fi list. Any device that joins it is on a protected, filtered network — same SafeSearch, same filtering, same blocked services as at home.

3. Moving on. Power Shield off (the power button, or Admin → Shutdown), pack it back into the box, and repeat at the next stay.

4. Back at home. Connect Shield's Ethernet to your home modem and power both Shield and the modem on. From your phone or laptop, join your WOMBATS Wi-Fi (not your home modem's Wi-Fi), open this page, and turn Shield Wi-Fi off as the first thing you do. The moment it's off, your modem's Wi-Fi resumes as your home network with Shield's filtering applied to it as before. Until then, no device on either Wi-Fi can reach the internet.

While travelling

You can still use the Shield web UI in travel mode — filtering levels, allow/block lists, per-device pauses, SafeSearch, popular-apps blocking. The one thing not to touch is the Wi-Fi power toggle (see the caution above).

Updates work in travel mode but, as at home, you choose when to install them. Nothing updates without you.

Tips & troubleshooting

Shield's Wi-Fi password is managed here, not on the Admin page.
At home, Shield Wi-Fi stays off. Your modem provides Wi-Fi, Shield does the filtering. Shield Wi-Fi is only on while Shield is being used as a travel router.
Pack the magnetic-lid box, the power adaptor, and the Ethernet cable together — Shield is small enough to forget, the adaptor isn't.
If you accidentally turn Shield Wi-Fi on at home: nothing's broken — power Shield down, then back up after a few seconds. Once it's reachable again over its own Wi-Fi, turn the Wi-Fi off and your home network resumes.

Need a hand? As a founding member you have a direct line to the people building Shield, the same email reaches the engineers. Talk to us.