What is the best/easiest/cheap way to implement a WireGuard client?

VPN
1

What is the best/easiest/cheap way to implement a WireGuard client?

2

Explain? Wireguard is free software.

3

The cheaper the hardware the slower your VPN will be. Just FYI. Like if you put it in a raspberryPi it would work, it’s just slow for large things.

4

Personally I run it on a Raspberry Pi 4 / 4GB. There is a very good installer from Pi-VPN.

Currently the Pi4s are pretty scarce and expensive. A good alternative is a Raspberry Pi 400, where the Pi is build into its own keyboard. A full set will be around 100€, and supports more than just the VPN.

You should not be afraid of some tutorial-guided command line entries. And your router must support Port-Forwarding and DDNS.

5
  1. The best way for a WireGuard Client: GL-AXT1800 openwrt ready router guaranteed WireGuard speed of 550 Mbps, see it at https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-axt1800/
  2. The easiest way for a WireGuard Client: GL-AR300M16 openwrt ready router with a speed of about 30-50Mbps, see it at https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar300m/
  3. The cheap way for a WireGuard Client: Any wireless router from Linksys, Netgear, Asus that can be flashed with openwrt and with a decent CPU such as MT7621. Running wireguard on openwrt with a MT7621 Soc router such as Netgear R6220 can guarantee a speed of 100Mbps. They can be found on ebay with a price under $20. such as this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/275158929518

all recommendations above are for a home setup, not for an office or business configuration.

6

I have a wireless router at home and I am using it’s openVPN client to connect to a VPN server. I want to switch to WireGuard because openVPN sucks. My router doesn’t support WireGuard. Are there cheap Ethernet switches that support WireGuard? Maybe a cheap/decent wifi router that supports WireGuard?

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I see that the Pi 4 only has 1 Ethernet port. I was hoping to have 2 ports, one for WAN and one for LAN.

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I see there are a couple of gl.inet routers that support WireGuard speeds of up to 500+mbps. Are there any published speeds for various routers flashed with openwrt? 100mbps is decent speed but I guess it might be worth spending a little more to get something a little faster.

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Could you please recommend also WireGuard Server routers? Need one to share my home internet

Thank you

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I’d look at GLiNet devices. Even their cheapest devices support Wireguard.

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Any mikrotik router supports wireguard. they are cheap, and there are plenty of options: https://mikrotik.com/products

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It is no router. It runs inside of your network, behind the router. You forward a port from the router to the Pi’s internal ID. It will run the WG client, and connect to the rest of the network devices. Illegitimate requests are killed by the integrated firewall.

13

Consulate this for the performance of openwrt wireguard:

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/vpn/wireguard/performance

If you’d like to get the maximum performance, your should consider a NanoPi R5S(1000Mbps wireguard speed perhaps) or something that feature an X86 chip.

https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&product\_id=287

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I see a really cheap pocket wireless router that has LAN and WAN ports. I can just use the Ethernet ports and disable the wifi. Thanks!

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So the Pi connects to the router over Ethernet and all other home devices connect to the Pi over WiFi? And that makes all WiFi devices connected to the Pi tunnel through the VPN?

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I like the idea of the R5S! I found a performance measurement for WireGuard: 600mbps

https://vantc.net/nanopi-r5s-openwrt-performance.html

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Their devices all run OpenWRT with LuCI available, so you can get under the covers and can configure the box pretty much anyway you want. They’re nearly as flexible as a vanilla install of Linux on a Raspberry Pi.

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The Pi does all the encryption and decryption. On the local network all traffic is decrypted.

Whether it is passed on via Ethernet or WiFi depends on your network setup. It is in general the same as with normal network traffic (in fact it is normal local network traffic).

Usually WiFi devices will be connected to the AP of the router - so it will go from the router encrypted to the Pi, from there back to the router (decrypted) via Ethernet, and then from the router via WiFi to the devices.

You could use the Pi as an AP as well - but it is not really good at it, lacking proper antennas.