Looking for a router with a fast(er) CPU

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.

Please don't recommend RockPro64. I've bought it specifically for this purpose, tried nearly all PCI-E cards I could find around my house and almost none of them worked. Not even I340-T4/I340-T4.

Tried multiple kernel versions, debugging, recompiling the kernel. Nothing worked, lost a month of my life on it. The only scenario where it did indeed work was on FreeBSD with I340-T2 installed.

I gave up and sold RP64.

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Hmm? I've used the 5.4 kernel (and PCIe cards worked fine) and I know people using it that way just fine.
That also sounds strange since it's the main platform for forks of Manjaro such as RoninDojo (they primarily use SATA adapters though) etc but they're on 5.10 now I believe.

The best option for what you are looking for would be something like Xiaomi Redmi AX6, which has two NPU - Network Processing Units, which are dedicated Crypto cores that would speed up VPN performance significantly. Unfortunately, AFAIK current train of OpenWRT uses an older kernel version that does not support SoC AX6 is based on.
There are Chinese adaptations of OpenWRT for these routers available on GitHub, but if you want official support, you should wait for the next version of the firmware.

Here is some more information on the VPN performance of IPQ807x (on which AX6 is based): IPQ806x NSS Drivers - #1654 by Tony.He

https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-mv1000/ does have some comparative figures for GL.Inet routers

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