I'd like to use the GL-B1300 since I'm moving abroad and I'd prefer to take with me the Linksys router because is way better, but the GL-B1300 will be powerful enough to provide me good VPN speeds for, lets say, 4 or 5 devices at the same time?
Also, will be necessary to update the GL-B1300 to a newer OpenWRT version for this task?
I'm planning to flash an official version, to the latest release 22.03.5 if it's required to setup the server, but my question goes more into terms of hw performance.
Just pointing it out, not all people are aware of the differance.
For someone to be able to answer the question, you'll need to define "good VPN speeds".
This is also easy to test at home, just put the B1300 behind the WRT1900, and run the VPN tunnel.
Looking at this old post, WRT1900AC has a roughly 300Mbps tested Wireguard speed, while the B1300 advertised Wireguard speed is 195Mbps (which means in real world might be even slower)
I have a WRT1200AC and I know for a fact that it runs the very latest vanilla (actual, non-forked) 23.05.x version of OpenWrt quite well. The WRT1900AC should be slightly better at a guess. Even just for security purposes running the latest version should be important.
The other thing I know it's that the WRT1200AC has a decent amount of storage, and I believe the WRT1900AC would be the same.
The reason I mention storage is that I have a D-Link DIR-882 that I have Tailscale (VPN built on WireGuard) installed on with the WRT1200AC behind it, but due to low storage I have run into problems upgrading it if the firmware image gets too big (too many packages). I am seriously considering swapping the 2 routers just because the WRT1200AC has much more storage, and therefore upgrades will be much easier.
The WRT1900ACS would be a best fit between the two options imo. Both really need to be updated to current builds.
The Linksys upgrade to current 23.05.2 stable will move you to DSA, so you will not be able to carry configs over from 19.07 - take a backup for reference before upgrading. (For the record, most if not all package configs will survive intact, but system & network will need attention).
I’d also suggest using a current ‘main’ Snapshot build for the Linksys to take advantage of very recent updates to mwlwifi that benefit the 1900 but aren’t included with 23.05.2 stable.
You can use the current Snapshot build w/out LuCI or there is an alternative Community Build here that is well respected.
This community build uses the latest WiFi driver?
And I agree that WRT1900ACS is a really good one, even with OpenVPN, due to the existence of crypto acceleration it has a not so bad transfer speed. Currently I have the WRT1900ACv2 and 3200ACM on hand which I might put it in some remote location to run OpenVPN there.
20231124-00
- update to 6f5c301eab71e07b1fe4b57ce6a2662dca4c66de
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/compare/4d9108e0...6f5c301e
- [upstream] update to kernel 6.1.63 (security and bug fixes)
- [cherrypick] #14044: mwlwifi: update to version 10.4.10-20231120
huge mwlwifi update thanks to @jbsky
fixes amsdu and wpa3 + many other improvements
It’s a big jump from 19.07 to 23.05.2. But it really shouldn’t be that painful, and if you don’t use Vlans, it’s pretty well a transparent process.
Take a backup.
download your choice of sysupgrade.bin (stable/snapshot/community)
flash it (no save/force)
Add a wire to a lan port and it should fire up with OpenWrt defaults of 192.168.1.1/dhcp. Enable wifi, and reconcile your system/network/firewall configs from your backup. You can likely just restore your package configs from backup as is.
