VPN speed with ASUS RT-N66U

[Starry]

Hello,
I'm "new" using VPN, and I have an old ASUS RT-N66U router that I do not use.
But I've had a problem with the speed through my ASUS RT-N66U router. Without VPN, the speed is 100 Mbit / sec, but when I connect VPN, the speed is only 10-15 Mbit / sec. I have tried 3 different VPN (IntegrityVPN, MullvadVPN and AirVPN) vendors and the results will be the same for everyone.

So I need some tips and maybe references to what needs to be done to correct this problem.
Are there any script I can use to make my router work best?

rgds
RL

 

[john9527]

So I need some tips and maybe references to what needs to be done to correct this problem.

You are not seeing a problem, just the limitation of the router. The processor in the N66 can't do any better.

 

[MichaelCG]

What are your speed expectations? You will be hard pressed to find a consumer router device that can do 100Mbit on a VPN...they may exist, but not common, nor cheap. Some of the newer high speed routers I think are getting closer to the 40-50Mbps range. To go higher, you will probably have to move to a x86 system to get more CPU behind it.

 

[CaptainSTX]

What are your speed expectations? You will be hard pressed to find a consumer router device that can do 100Mbit on a VPN...they may exist, but not common, nor cheap. Some of the newer high speed routers I think are getting closer to the 40-50Mbps range. To go higher, you will probably have to move to a x86 system to get more CPU behind it.

A little pessimistic but 60 Mbps is probably the tops for any SOHO router currently on the market. I can get 50+ on my AC1900P with a 1.4 Ghz processor.

 

[Starry]

You are not seeing a problem, just the limitation of the router. The processor in the N66 can't do any better.

Ok, I did not know that. If I want to get up to speed, which ASUS (or other) router (with "Merlin" firmware) should I use? And of course with the same (or better) features as on my "old" router.
/R

 

[pattiri]

well as an example, with my AC88u, when I'm torrenting with 50 mbit through VPN, my cpu usage; one core is around 60-70% other one is around 5-10% and as far as I know openVPN is a single-core app. so possibly even ac88u can't achive 100 mbit over VPN.

 

[Zirescu]

If you want higher VPN speeds you'll need to run the client on the computer.

 

[doczenith1]

My apologies to those who have seen this copy and paste too many times

I did some testing a while back (January 2017) that may help you with some reference numbers on throughput. These are my speeds using the OpenVPN client on two different ASUS routers. Both routers running Asuswrt-Merlin 380.64 firmware. Connecting to PIA VPN servers on port 1198.

AC3100 (1.4 Ghz dual core)
CTF (Cut Through Forwarding NAT Acceleration)
DL: 61 Mbps with core 1 at 25%, core 2 at 75%
DL :74 Mbps with core 1 at 30%, core 2 at 85% with mods*
UL: 84 Mbps with core 1 at 35%, core 2 at 100%

AC68U (1.0 Ghz dual core)
CTF enabled
DL: 44 Mbps with core 1 at 30%, core 2 at 80%
UL: 58 Mbps with core 1 at 40%, core 2 at 100%

For reference, when using the same PIA VPN server with a windows client (i5-2500K) I'm able to attain 250 Mbps down and 350 Mbps up on the same DSLReports HTML5 speed test.

The speed tests were conducted over a wired connection from the computer to the router.

Data encryption: AES-128-CBC
Data authentication: SHA1
Handshake: RSA-2048

*Adding the following lines to the custom configuration bumped the DL speeds to 74 Mbps.
sndbuf 524288
rcvbuf 524288
push "sndbuf 524288"
push "rcvbuf 524288"