RT-AC66U incoming VPN speed slow

[BeachBoy]

Trying to use search but "VPN" is too short and what I found through google seems to be for people using VPN to use netflix and such.

I have installed the router at a small business and an employee works remotely by connecting through the VPN and using the outlook pst files and other files on the server.

He complains that it's very slow.

Are there easy settings and/or tweaks I can do to improve the performance of his connection? Otherwise, is there another setup or router I could use that would provide a better performance for incoming VPN connection accessing the server files?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[BeachBoy]

I guess not many use their routers to have incoming VPN to their local networks?

 

[netware5]

I am using income VPN every day. It is normal to be slower than "plain" connection. Crypto tasks are very heavy for the router's CPU and other hardware. You can not compare the router's crypto performance with your PC's one. For example my ISP provides 50 Mbps download and 33 Mbps upload. When connecting through the OpenVPN tunnel I reach maximum 14 Mbps download and upload. Try to search this forum for the Merlin's research on OpenVPN performance. As I remember the maximum possible for your router is about 25-28 Mbps. If you need more you should look for some hardware crypto accelerators. You may also consider to reduce the length of the keys. If you use 256 bit AES keys you may try with 192 or 128 AES keys.

 

[RMerlin]

Blowfish-CBC should also be a bit faster than AES in theory (I didn't test it myself, as I use AES).

 

[BeachBoy]

I am using income VPN every day. It is normal to be slower than "plain" connection. Crypto tasks are very heavy for the router's CPU and other hardware. You can not compare the router's crypto performance with your PC's one. For example my ISP provides 50 Mbps download and 33 Mbps upload. When connecting through the OpenVPN tunnel I reach maximum 14 Mbps download and upload. Try to search this forum for the Merlin's research on OpenVPN performance. As I remember the maximum possible for your router is about 25-28 Mbps. If you need more you should look for some hardware crypto accelerators. You may also consider to reduce the length of the keys. If you use 256 bit AES keys you may try with 192 or 128 AES keys.

Great info, I will check this.

Thanks for your help.

In terms of hardware, is there an off-the-shelf router that performs better than mine? Would AC-68U make a significant difference?

 

[RMerlin]

The RT-AC68U can be close to 3x faster than the RT-AC66U in regards to OpenVPN (at least with my FW, I didn't benchmark Asus's).

Beyond that, you need a specialized router with HW acceleration for AES.