Hello, I am looking to purchase a device on which I can run a Wireguard server in my home. The purpose is to have the IP address from my home while abroad. The typical use case will be streaming video. The network speeds in my home are 500 Mbps up and down.
From what I have gathered so far (and this is all still a bit confusing to me as I have never done this before) I can either port forward the necessary ports for Wireguard or use Tailscale and set up the device as an exit node.
In my search, I came across the GL.iNet Brume 2 (GL-MT2500) but it turns out not to be compatible with Openwrt. In the thread about this device I see some people recommending the NanoPi R4S.
One benchmark I found indicates the R4S can go to about 820 Mbps on Wireguard performance which in any case is a lot better than the GL-MT2500's advertised 355Mbps.
With all that said, are there other recommended products, perhaps more suitable, that can serve my purpose?
Secondly, can these devices somehow be remotely restarted in case the Wireguard server stops working? This device will be unattended without anybody in the home for months at a time and getting a relative to come over and take a look would be quite cumbersome.
Check the wg speed thread to inform your purchase decision. Get as much CPU today as you can. Having a device that 'only' does 600mbps is no fun if you crank up your home Internet to 1gbps.
I've not had to reboot my devices on stable branches (v23.05). Stable as.
Thank you for linking this list. From the products listed there it seems the Raspberry Pi 5 is the best bang for buck option, 2.6 Gbps for under $80 which is not much more expense than the R4S options in my country. Though it does not specify if that is the 4GB or 8GB (more expensive) model.
Be mindful that the list is based on a synthetic benchmark rather than real world usage. I'm not sure how far I'd trust it when it came to my own money..
Memory isn't a factor for the Wireguard operation (at least nowadays those SBCs at least > 1GB ram), but as other pointed out, it's synthetic benchmark, please also check the actual hardware configuration before making decision.
For example, Raspberry Pi 5 is showing 2.6Gbps speed however.....it has only single NIC, and the onboard NIC is only 1GbE, so you can't get anything beyond 1Gbps in real world.
Oh right... I had not realized this. In any case, my home network connection is 500Mbps. If the Raspberry Pi 5 is bottlenecked by the the NIC alone(and if I were to have 1Gbps from my ISP) then I can expect speeds close to the 1Gbps? Unless I'm missing something, it seems like the best product on the list for me even with a network upgrade in mind.
Also, I think I only need 1 NIC? As I understand, I just need to plug this device into my main router?
I pulled the trigger on a RPi 4 Model B 1GB, with power brick and SD card included for $50. Will try to report back with Wireguard benchmarks when it arrives.