Looking for a router with a fast(er) CPU

Can you switch to wireguard from OpenVPN?

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i suggere linksys e8450 for vpn he has a test in a forum with aes ....

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Cool, thanks for the suggestion. How's its wifi? I imagine it will be problematic to connect from another room without adding some external wifi adapter to it?

Are you saying you only got 16mbps on Wrt3200acm with OpenVPN client? Man, that was one of the options I was considering.

I can, but it will be a bit of a pain. First, I run my own OpenVPN server bundled with PiHole from a docker image. If I switch to wireguard I'll have to either loose PiHole or create my own image. Second, installing wireguard client in OpenWrt is a bit more involved. All for the benefit of about 20-30% CPU power savings (correct me if I'm wrong on the numbers).

Some device numbers, rango with CESA in play should muster more steam than stated.

I can download at 2.5 MBps with router CPU at about 10 % using a WRT3200ACM through an OpenVPN tunnel. It can obviously do way more but I have a VDSL connection at 23 down 3 up at best. The router works using software and hardware flow offloading but I guess it does not help OpenVPN a lot. What may help a little is that my VPN provider supports ECC.

There's no wifi, you need to use your own AP (router, AP or whatever you have)

Might not be what you're looking for but I'm running FreeBSD 13-STABLE (I guess some Linux distro works just as good) on my RockPro64 because I wanted to integrate PiHole functionality (https://0xerr0r.github.io/blocky/ --> https://www.freshports.org/dns/blocky/) and a bunch of other things which works really well in a relatively small package.=)

If you use the router as a server and connect a client from internet and surf through the router (that is duplex data transmission for the router WAN interface!) then you can’t go faster than the routers uplink which is 3Mbit/s in your case.

The data flow from VPNserver/router to the VPN client is uplink data.

Yes, I know that, thank you. But I think Timm mentioned he wanted to use a router as a VPN Client (as I do) and just wanted to reassure him that the router's CPU was probably not a problem when being limited to 16 mbps (or a little more than 20 in my case).

OP already mentioned he gets 100mbps from computer's openvpn client so ISP won't be a bottleneck

You could try installing haveged on the host. Can sometimes be hard to get entropy on a headless system (without USB :P)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Haveged

[OpenWrt Wiki] Techdata: MikroTik RB760iGS (hEX S)

The CPU looks slow; but it's dual-core, supports hardware offloading, can pull a Gbit with normal traffic, and is rated for up to ~400Mbit IPsec (which has more overhead than Wireguard). They make beefier ones too.

Do you know if they have a similarly spec'd model with WiFi?

Update: ok, I see hAP ac2 is supported and there's this thread

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There are plenty mt7621a based devices, up to 802.11ax (mt7915e) wireless - the SOC is not a runner though (good hardware offloading, dated and tired SOC).

The TP Link Archer routers are just too old. The chips in them are 10+ years old.

I can vouch for the Zyxel Armor Z2. It's a really solid powerhouse, does everything I need and doesn't cost much anymore. Check ebay, I bought mine from this guy and he has a bunch: https://www.ebay.com/itm/294387764229
It says refurbished but they're new.

I checked out the NanoPi R4S and the prices are astronomical, I think I paid like $30 for it and now they're $100+

30$ for a R4S? Are you sure you are not mixing it up with the R2S? Even for a R2S that is a questionable low price an could only be barebone.

Just set up wireguard, getting 28mbps down, 21 up, which is about 4 times the speed.

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You're welcome.