Commercial VPN Fast - own VPN Sever slow?!

[Alex Taylor]

Hi,

I'm in the Middle East using a commercial VPN (Streamvia) to connect to a UK based server. My internet connection is ADSL with around 15Mbs download and the usual rubbish ADSL .6Mbs upload. When using my ASUS RT-AC88U as a client is getting around 12Mbs download from Streamvia sometimes up to 14. Which I think is pretty good overal. It also shows that my 'local' ISP isn't traffic shaping VPNs.

At my UK home I have BT FibreToTheProperty (100Mbs down, 20Mb up) with at 10ms ping. I've got a Linksys LRT214 running an OpenVPN server and PPTP but when I connect from my ASUS client in the ME I'm only getting around 2Mbs with either PPTP or OpenVpn.

Has anyone got any suggestions or ideas as to what could be happening? When I was in the UK using a 4G connection on my mobile as an OpenVPN client I was only getting around 2Mbs as well. Is it a BT throttling issue or perhaps an issue with the LRT214.

Thanks,

Alex

 

[netware5]

Hi,
......................
At my UK home I have BT FibreToTheProperty (100Mbs down, 20Mb up) with at 10ms ping. I've got a Linksys LRT214 running an OpenVPN server and PPTP but when I connect from my ASUS client in the ME I'm only getting around 2Mbs with either PPTP or OpenVpn.

Has anyone got any suggestions or ideas as to what could be happening? When I was in the UK using a 4G connection on my mobile as an OpenVPN client I was only getting around 2Mbs as well. Is it a BT throttling issue or perhaps an issue with the LRT214.

Thanks,

Alex

Your Linksys router is too weak to perform heavy crypto tasks for the VPN. Just compare the CPUs and their frequencies of both your routers and will see the difference.

 

[Alex Taylor]

Your Linksys router is too weak to perform heavy crypto tasks for the VPN. Just compare the CPUs and their frequencies of both your routers and will see the difference.

Hi,

I find that a little hard to believe. It's a dedicated VPN router designed for exactly this task.

It's specs are

• 50 IPsec Site to Site tunnels
• 5 SSL tunnels
• 5 PPTP tunnels
• 110 Mbps IPsec throughput
• 12 Mbps SSL throughput

When I'm on the LAN and connect via OpenVPN I get 10Mbs so I find your statement hard to correlate.

 

[netware5]

Hi,

I find that a little hard to believe. It's a dedicated VPN router designed for exactly this task.

It's specs are

• 50 IPsec Site to Site tunnels
• 5 SSL tunnels
• 5 PPTP tunnels
• 110 Mbps IPsec throughput
• 12 Mbps SSL throughput

When I'm on the LAN and connect via OpenVPN I get 10Mbs so I find your statement hard to correlate.

Linksys LRT214
CPU: Cavium CN5020@300MHz
RAM: 128 MB

ASUS RT-AC88U
CPU: Broadcom BCM4709C0@1.4 GHz, 2 cores
RAM: 512 MB

Probably you are victim of bad marketing practices of router vendor. What mean 12Mbps SSL throughput? Under what conditions has been tested? What encryption has been used? The OpenVPN speed depends on CPU clock, encryption method (for example AES-128 is faster than AES 256), using of LZO encryption (if LZO is "yes" this impacts in higher CPU usage).

Definitely the LRT214 is much weaker than RT-AC88U, so that is the reason to have much better OpenVPN performance with ASUS. The RT-AC88U also has two cores. Despite the OpenVPN is a single core application, the multicore CPU allows one core to be dedicated for OpenVPN only while another core to be used for rest of router's tasks.

You may also check this chart to check the ranking of both routers https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/old-tools/charts/router/bar/74-wan-to-lan

 

[Alex Taylor]

Hi,

I think you missed my point slightly. The speeds I quoted were both on the Asus as a client.

I just tried switching the protocol from TCP to UDP on my LRT214 and the speeds jumped from 2Mbs to 9Mbs all other settings were identical.

Even more confused.

Linksys LRT214
CPU: Cavium CN5020@300MHz
RAM: 128 MB

ASUS RT-AC88U
CPU: Broadcom BCM4709C0@1.4 GHz, 2 cores
RAM: 512 MB

Probably you are victim of bad marketing practices of router vendor. What mean 12Mbps SSL throughput? Under what conditions has been tested? What encryption has been used? The OpenVPN speed depends on CPU clock, encryption method (for example AES-128 is faster than AES 256), using of LZO encryption (if LZO is "yes" this impacts in higher CPU usage).

Definitely the LRT214 is much weaker than RT-AC88U, so that is the reason to have much better OpenVPN performance with ASUS. The RT-AC88U also has two cores. Despite the OpenVPN is a single core application, the multicore CPU allows one core to be dedicated for OpenVPN only while another core to be used for rest of router's tasks.

You may also check this chart to check the ranking of both routers https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/old-tools/charts/router/bar/74-wan-to-lan

 

[netware5]

Hi,

I think you missed my point slightly. The speeds I quoted were both on the Asus as a client.

I just tried switching the protocol from TCP to UDP on my LRT214 and the speeds jumped from 2Mbs to 9Mbs all other settings were identical.

Even more confused.

I didn't missed. The speed of OpenVPN channel is limited by the weaker device (client or server) on both ends and by internet connection. In the first case you have ASUS as client and much more powerful hardware of your VPN provider as a server. In second case you have the same ASUS as client and your Linksys as server.

In first case you are most probably limited by the download speed of your internet connection (15 Mbits) and the next limitation will be your ASUS. If you have faster internet connection and assuming that your VPN provider's hardware has an "unlimited" power comparing to your devices, most probably ASUS could reach up to 50 Mbits.

In second case you are limited by the server device Linksys as your download internet connection is the same (Middle East 15 Mbits) and the client device is the same (ASUS).

The UDP is always faster than TCP. You may read this article to understand pros and cons of TCP vs UDP and how the geographical distance reflects on the tunnel speed. There is also some explanation how the TCP tunnel works, so you will see that the upload speed also does matter. https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/7359/httpswww.bestvpn.comblog7359openvpn-tcp-vs-udp-difference-choose/

You may search the forum for some info how to check the OpenVPN performance using the iperf utility. In order to have "clean" environment you should eliminate the influence of internet connection and client device by using powerful client (for example a laptop) connected directly to the WAN port of your Linksys. In such conditions you will reach the theoretical maximum from your router, because the laptop is always much much better in crypto tasks, so the limiting factor will be solely the router.

 

[System Error Message]

i did say many times in other threads not to consider these outdated vpn routers anymore. Im surprised they're still being sold. Even so part of the reason of less speed is that you dont get as much upload to the rest of the world. This may have been fixed now but last time i could only get 4Mb/s upload outside the uk with 7Mb/s upload line. Despite the outdated VPN router it would be faster at pptp than openvpn so the fact that it performs both at the same speed is an issue with UK's international upload as you dont get what you subscribed when uploading to another country. It could also be the other way round, capped international bandwidth in the middle east for download. Since your vpn service isnt hosted at a house but at a datacenter, datacenters are not capped, throttled or managed with their internet speeds.

However i strongly suggest you change out your linksys VPN router, get yourself either another asus router or some non VPN router.