I'm setting up a Raspberry Pi 4 B router for my father. The hope is that it connects to his local wifi/ethernet, broadcasts a new wifi signal, and encrypts the traffic via VPN. This is needed because a VPN can't be downloaded on his work computer.
I'm rather new to all of this, but I followed this guide to get it working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlHWnKVpygw. The only other thing I've changed is disabling IPv6. The VPN is set up using OpenVPN, and Surfshark is the provider.
It accomplishes my goals, but the speeds are extremely slow. I get on average 300 mb/s over wifi. The Rasberry Pi is connected to my internet via wifi, but when I connect to the Pi's wifi signal, I'm getting ~1 mb/s. Any ideas what's causing this, or how I can set it up to connect to my internet via ethernet and potentially bypass this? Thanks.
From the Pi's wifi, not even possible. The wifi chipset on all pi models is really low end and will not be sufficient as an AP except for low-bandwidth/low-range/low-client-count use cases.
To get the kind of performance you are looking for, you must use a real dedicated AP.
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Thanks for the reply. Do you have any AP recommendations that are fairly easy to set up with OpenWRT and would be able to accomplish the VPN goal? Realistically this is connecting to one computer and needs to be able to handle a Microsoft Teams call at worst.
E: I went with a TP-Link AC1750. Installation seems easy and, from there, hopefully I can set it up just as I did the R Pi.
I can’t find that you have specified what speed the ISP is providing to begin with?
OpenVpn is a vpn tunnel technology built on TLS traffic and AES encryption. So it will always be more or less slow depending on the SoC/CPU ability to accelerate AES encryption. Which RaspberryPi 4 have non of.
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Hello. The plan I have with my ISP is supposed to provide 300 mb/s. Often I get a bit more than that. Just now on my Macbook, connected to the same Surfshark location as the RasberryPi (though I realize it's not OpenVPN), I got 320 mb/s according to Speedtest.net. I'm hoping it's just a RaspberryPi issue and connecting via a dedicated AP will solve my issue.
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I am not a fan of Tod's tutorial.
This link is, almost, all in LUCI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJSkDeptzpY
So you can tinker around with it and learn with the brick when you have hobby-time. I mean Pi. 
I run it on a Pi Zero W as a travel router and get 10Mb/s, then it starts to choke. You should be getting much more.
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Thanks for the link! Yeah I feel like something is wrong with my setup to justify 1 Mb/s. That channel helped me get the VPN working in like 10 minutes after banging my head against the wall for three days trying to figure it out how to do it in Terminal, so I trust him already. I'll give it a shot tonight!
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My, obligatory setting up Pi with OpenWrt:
When you first boot the pi is unlikely to have the correct date and time.
System/System/ sync with browser.
It is important for syncing with the Wan and DNS lookups.
and remember: it is a Pi, so it is easer to plug it into a monitor when having issues with CLI.
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