Connecting to home open vpn speeds

[White-Noise]

Hi folks, I have a tp link archer ax50. I'm on virgin 270 down 27 up.

I connect to my home network often from away but the speeds aren't what I had hoped.

On the download when at my girlfriends I see around 1.3 Mega bytes down and about 800 kilobytes up. She has the same virgin setup as I do. I had hoped it would be a lot nearer to my home broadband or Hers speeds but it seems not.

I presume there is a limitation with my router. I have a ticket with tp link but not expecting too much so wanted to check if others can share a comparison or advise please.

I've checked the firmware, it's using udp, I connect from my phone on open vpn (and laptop). The cpus on the router hit around 60 and 80pct so are working hard but not maxing.

Is this just what I can expect and perhaps I need a better router? Virgin don't seem to do any throttling I changed the default port but didn't seem to make much difference.

It's not a deal breaker I just thought I could do better! Thanks in advance.

Ps is this something like pivpn could help with?

Edited by White-Noise on Tuesday 2nd April 19:16

[xeny]

White-Noise said:

The cpus on the router hit around 60 and 80pct so are working hard but not maxing.

That 80% will have a degree of smoothing applied, so I'd evaluate that as the CPU maxed out for at least some of the time.

PiVPN is likely to help if it lets you throw more hardware at the problem, and as a bonus Wireguard makes better use of hardware resources than OpenVPN.

Don't forget you can run PiVPN on many mainstream Linux distros, not just on a Pi, so if you can rustle up a spare PC you can easily/cheaply try it.

[White-Noise]

xeny said:

White-Noise said:

The cpus on the router hit around 60 and 80pct so are working hard but not maxing.

That 80% will have a degree of smoothing applied, so I'd evaluate that as the CPU maxed out for at least some of the time.

PiVPN is likely to help if it lets you throw more hardware at the problem, and as a bonus Wireguard makes better use of hardware resources than OpenVPN.

Don't forget you can run PiVPN on many mainstream Linux distros, not just on a Pi, so if you can rustle up a spare PC you can easily/cheaply try it.

Thanks Xeny that is helpful. I have a couple of pi connected at home so I shall give that a try.

[eeLee]

go PiVPN with Wireguard only. OpenVPN is less efficient.
Lifting the load off the router will also help.

[SpidersWeb]

White-Noise said:

I have a couple of pi connected at home so I shall give that a try.

On a BT line with 500 down 80 up (and for a home VPN the up is the limiting factor for any remotely connected devices), then with Wireguard on a Pi I get 35-40 download speed on the remote device without any problem.

An alternative to Wireguard is Tailscale, which will run on a Pi or other devices such as an Apple TV box and is slightly easier to configure,

[White-Noise]

SpidersWeb said:

On a BT line with 500 down 80 up (and for a home VPN the up is the limiting factor for any remotely connected devices), then with Wireguard on a Pi I get 35-40 download speed on the remote device without any problem.

An alternative to Wireguard is Tailscale, which will run on a Pi or other devices such as an Apple TV box and is slightly easier to configure,

Thanks for the pointers. Which pi are you using out of interest?

[SpidersWeb]

White-Noise said:

Which pi are you using out of interest?

An ancient Pi 2 B - www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-2-model-...

It spends most of its time running a PiHole, but I added PiVPN for when I am away for streaming TV overseas and also with a split VPN to provide the PiHole blocking on mobile devices when I am out of the house.

[White-Noise]

SpidersWeb said:

White-Noise said:

Which pi are you using out of interest?

An ancient Pi 2 B - www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-2-model-...

It spends most of its time running a PiHole, but I added PiVPN for when I am away for streaming TV overseas and also with a split VPN to provide the PiHole blocking on mobile devices when I am out of the house.

Ah, your speeds are miles better even on that one. I've a 4 ill try but that's even overkill for me. I was reading online some folks were getting up at 100 odd on a 3b iirc

[White-Noise]

Well I am impressed. Its been quite easy to set up and now I am getting 4.2 megabytes upload speed over wireguard. Funny even though she's on the same virgin deal she gets 36 up compared to 27 at my place!?

Only thing I'm not getting right is being able to copy from a server I have running at her place direct to my home. Staging it on my phone seems to work as expected. Have you guys got that working OK? I've selected the apps I need for split tunnelling but the file management app doesn't seem too happy working locally when the vpn is connected.

Thanks again it's better than I expected.

[eeLee]

The differences in speed between you and your lady will be down to cable lengths, quality and many other parameters.
PiVPN on a *nix host - with Pihole if you really want to enjoy it - is quite simple and Wireguard is far, far, far more efficient than OpenVPN.

I would put Tailscale on the server. It's been mentioned but I use Tailscale first to plug my whole network together, anywhere and everywhere. Also consider SyncThing to sync your server from A to B and back again. It will deal with NAT without a firewall being opened (even CGNAT).