Hey all. I have a streaming device that’s setup though Surfshark to bypass geolocked content.
I’ve got it setup via OpenVPN through my router to ensure everything goes through Surfshark as that’s easier than trying to do it at the device level.
However, I’m getting a ton of buffering and alerts that my data speed is too low for uninterrupted streaming when I’m trying to stream super high resolution 4K content. Seems fine on 1080p content and below if I force it do use lower resolution.
Any solution to this or is Surfshark just not fast enough for high bitrate 4k video streaming?
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I’ve got it setup via OpenVPN through my router to ensure everything goes through Surfshark as that’s easier than trying to do it at the device level.
That’s the issue 100%.
if you don’t have a 300+ router you won’t even get remotely to 4k speeds on Open VPN
or if you have some specialized Wireguard router in the 75-150+
Open VPN needs an extremely speedy CPU ( for router standards ) to reach higher speeds.
Top-end Router models ( well above 400 ) can go around 550mbit for speeds on open VPN.
My guess is you very likely want to run 4k streaming on Netflix or something this usually needs 35-75 Mbit speed so you have an “average” home router that runs on Open VPN likely 10-35 Mbit maybe 50 Mbit.
Any solution to this or is Surfshark just not fast enough for high bitrate 4k video streaming?
Surfshark can deliver up to 750mbit speed in my tests on wireguard.
The solution would be , switch to Wireguard ( average home router with WG ability can do around 75-150mbit ) or install it on device level ( even a fire TV stick LITE can do 150-190mbit on wireguard to show as comparision how weak the average Router CPU is , a fire TV stick lite costs like 20€ sometimes less)
Hi there! OpenVPN runs as a monolithic process and cannot run multi-threaded. Since routers don’t have powerful CPUs, encrypting and decrypting OpenVPN traffic is a real challenge for them making the speed drop large but not to worry!
Here are a few simple solutions you can try to increase your speed:
Connect to a few different servers (preferably the ones close to you).
Switch your protocol between TCP and UDP.
Enable QoS and change Upload and Download to 100Mbps.
Disable the SPI Firewall and NAT Acceleration (if your router has one).
Look for the most optimal MTU value (it ranges from 1300 to 1500).
In case these steps don’t increase your speed much, try using our app on your devices - not only will it give better speeds but also a plethora of additional features!
Router is an Asus A86U, quad core 1.8ghz with 1gig of ram. It’s not a lightweight and having watched it’s processor loads while streaming, it’s barely working. This is one of the highest scored prosumer routers out there.
So I’m confident it’s a not a router bottleneck.
ISP is fibre optic synchronous gigabit, and I’m not using my ISP’s crappy modem/router combo either, I have a fibre to CAT5 media adapter straight to the router and the router handles the PPPoe as well. I routinely see gigabit speeds, consistently, regardless of time of day.
So I’m also confident it’s not an ISP issue.
The device I’m using is hardwired straight to the router via CAT5 on a gigabit port, so the bottleneck isn’t there either.
Router is an Asus A86U, quad core 1.8ghz with 1gig of ram. It’s not a lightweight and having watched it’s processor loads while streaming, it’s barely working. This is one of the highest scored prosumer routers out there.
Open VPN is single-core (Wireguard is multi-core) so a low CPU load wouldn’t say much because it counts all cores but open VPN loads only 1 core so it doesn’t matter if your router got 2 or 200 cores it’s all based on IPC for open VPN.
aka 25% would mean 1 core fully loaded very likely ( mind you the Polling rate is often above 1ms for router UI and CPU instruct in NS range aka even a load of 15% or 10% could mean that the CPU core 100% hundreds of times in NS range you don’t even see ).
also, it’s up to what encryption surfshark uses Like your Router supports AES NI but if Surfshark utilizes settings that don’t use AES NI it won’t be speedy either.
An easy test would be.
Remove the VPN from the router.
Install the VPN on a Laptop or Desktop WITH LAN cable ( not Wlan ! ) and test again you will likely get way higher speeds cause even a 6 or 8 year old laptop or desktop CPU will be faster than top-tier router CPU.
theres also a Beta firmware i think that supports Wireguard for your Router.
So, having it top of mind again this morning I re-enabled the OpenVPN settings at the router level, confirmed the device data was travelling through the VPN again, and it seems…stable.
I’m going to experiment more in the next day or so and see how things go. Some of the stuff I was having trouble with was 4K high bitrate stuff (perhaps HEVC) which probably means the filesizes were…massive. So that could indeed be what was overwhelming things. With more modest expectations today (trying some “regular” 4K content) it seems to be running just fine.
I’m going to experiment more in the next day or so and see how things go. Some of the stuff I was having trouble with was 4K high bitrate stuff (perhaps HEVC) which probably means the filesizes were…massive.
oh yeah these files are massive easily multiple GB if its high quality stuff way more than that saw file sizes of 75gb just for movies if you want to stream that you need to have a pretty good speed available