Sawat Dee Khrap MrGundam,
I also live in the Land of Smiles, Chiang Mai, and use VPN on two RT-AC88U’s for the purpose you mention. I am happy to share my experiences with you.
My streaming requirement is to connect to the west coast of USA vs east coast to reduce ping time and latency as much as possible from Thailand. Two of the big streaming services (Netfluckus and Hoola Hoops) have declared war on VPN providers and currently block VPN and web proxy services. Many VPN services have not been able to work around the blocks. Some can at times. I’ve tried several services. The one that works best for me is TorGuard. You will have to pay a little extra for a private IP to get around the Netfluckus and Hoola Hoops blocks if those are services you want to use. Make sure they offer this for the region you want to connect to. If you don’t use a streaming service that blocks VPN’s, then you don’t need the private IP. For me, it is worth a few extra bucks each month. I also maintain a USA billing address associated with my credit card and USA phone number through Skype so I can subscribe to USA based streaming services on their websites.
I have TorGuard client installed on all of my other devices and use that when surfing the web on public wifi spots. The iPad setup is a little more involved but it can be done.
I have a Samsung 4k UHD TV that has a USA region setting that allowed me to get USA Channel store content when connected to my router. But I had visitor bring me a Roku 4 from USA. Please note I had to use a step down converter for the Roku as it does not support 220V. It not only gave me many more channel options, but the processor in the Roku greatly improved my streaming experience. So, you may also want to consider a play station 4, Roku, Apple, Chromecast or other streaming device combined with the VPN. I also use USB cooling pads on my Roku and routers because as you know, it can get hot here in Thailand. Also, for best performance use ethernet (CAT 5e, 6 or 7) between the media player or TV and the router.
You can search the web and find many complaining about OpenVPN performance. I have seen this for myself. When it comes to VPN performance, distance is not your friend. I have done a lot of testing and found that the level of encryption will also impact performance. OpenVPN is single processor threaded so it cannot take advantage of dual core processors. Since my primary purpose is streaming media, I don’t use any encryption in order to get the best streaming performance. If I connect to the TorGuard server in Bangkok, I get near native line speed. The further away the server, the download speed starts to drop. I have also noticed that VPN performance can vary at different days of the week or times of the day. I think it all depends on where you are trying to connect to and what is going with your local ISP. For the most part, I get very good to excellent streaming most of the time. The few times I have had issues, I find a power cycle of the modem and router usually will do the trick. I use Merlin Build 380.62 since it came out. It has been working great for my OpenVPN requirements. I highly recommend that version as a result. I primarily use the OpenVPN Client 1. I have a NAS on the USB 3.0 port and a printer on the USB 2.0 port.
I currently have 3BB fiber with 100Mbps down/10Mbps up when not using VPN. I often get more than that when I have tested. 3BB provided a Fiberhome GPON modem/router. The firmware if very limited. And that is saying it nicely! What you want to do is place the fiberhome device in bridge mode. Basically, you are turning it into a modem. Make sure you change the router IP of one or both devices to avoid any conflict. For example, if the fiberhome is 192.168.1.1, change it to 192.168.0.1, or change the IP of the AC88U from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.2.1. Take screen prints of the settings, etc before you start changing things. Turn off DHCP (see note below), the radio and other services not required. Note the PPOE userid and password as you will need this when configuring your AC88U. Your provider should have given you a piece of paper with the userid and password.
NOTE: When you turn of DHCP server on the fiberhome modem/router, you will need to manually configure your IPv4 ethernet adapter to be an ip address of 192.168.1.x (x=5 for example) with a gateway of 192.168.1.1 in order to access the web gui.
I used yorgi’s awesome VPN client set up guide to tweek the settings from the TorGuard instructions. I also included the following in the Additional Config section to further tune my settings.
persist-key
persist-tun
sndbuf 524288
rcvbuf 524288
push "sndbuf 524288"
push "rcvbuf 524288"
tun-mtu 1500
mssfix 1450
nobind
mtu-disc yes
pull
fast-io
auth-nocache
I have two AC88U connected to the Fiberhome modem. Router A is set “All” for Redirect Internet Traffic and router B is set to “Policy Rules”. I primarily use Router A as I want all of my devices to connect to USA. Another family member lives next door. I set up Router B for their use. All of their devices use the native WAN. But their Roku player goes through their VPN connection. Both routers use the same 3BB userid and password. This allows me to change VPN servers if I need to without impacting them. The only reason I need to change it is that Fox Network is not offered in all markets on SlingTV. So for that must see football game, I am all set!
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have other questions.
