How do I improve my home VPN speed?

VPN
1

Here is my current setup:

Server Side

  • 50/50mbit connection
  • Asus RT-AC66U router running OpenVPN server

Client Side 1

  • glinet router set up as a wifi hotspot running OpenVPN Client through the location’s internet connection (airbnb, hotel, airport, other public internet connection)

Client Side 2

  • Lenovo T450s running OpenVPN client and using connectify hotspot to share the internet connection with other devices.

Goals

  • Tunnel all internet activity from my remote devices through the Server Side’s internet connection as fast as possible. Ping is not important, throughput is–for file transfers.
  • Enable local access to Server-side devices (VMWare server, NAS, etc) from Client-side devices as if they are on a local network.

Current speed tests cap out at 6mbit download and 2mbit upload for devices connected through Client Side 2. Client Side 1 is harder to benchmark mainly because of captive portal, and the hotel wifi is slower than the router seems to be able to manage.

Here’s what I’m thinking to do.

Option 1

Buy a RPi3 and add an additional USB to Ethernet dongle and have it sit behind the router. I’ve seen reports of 30/30. Not sure how true it is.

Option 2

Buy an old(er) laptop, and a USB to Ethernet dongle, install PFSense, and re-create the Tomato setup as my Asus RT-AC66U. I would imagine that I’m more likely to get the full 50/50mbit access pending the speed of the internet wherever the client side is located.

Is there a third, better option? Or did I do good reddit?

2

There’s a number of possible bottlenecks here.

What kind of encryption settings are you using?

You can gain a little speed by going down to a 128-bit AEAD mode cipher like AES-128-GCM instead of AES-256-GCM.

But in any case you’re not going to get near 50Mbit with the home router you are using, because it simply can’t move the i/o that quickly and encrypt/decrypt on the fly. Most consumer level routers are too weak for that.

Pretty much any x86 processor will blow that out of the water though. Your pfSense setup is a sound one.

Also note that hotel wifi is notoriously bad, and VPNs generally don’t cope with packet loss well, so you might have some throughput and reliability penalties if you are in a location with a spotty connection.

3

Option 2
Buy an old(er) laptop, and a USB to Ethernet dongle, install PFSense,

PfSense with just about any hardware from the last 10 years will handle 50 Mbps VPN, but a laptop and USB to Ethernet dongle is not the way to do it. Get a small form factor PC and use a real Intel network card.

I’m running OpenVPN on Pfsense with a SFF PC I got in ebay for $75. It has a Core2Duo 3Ghz and it handles 60Mbps with ease.

4

Well, i guess there are quite a number of hacks available online to get you to increase your home vpn speed.
As far as i know vpn’s do get you slower speeds depending upon the type of encryption and security protocol you are using.
Higher the security protocol, higher are the chances you would be encountering slower speeds.