What bandwidth can you expect to get with VPN?

[Sverre]

I know the basics of VPN, it's not a tunnel through the Internet, like some believe, but pure, old fashioned packet-encryption.

To encrypt the packets you send, and de-crypt those you receive, you need processing power.

My new RT-AC5300 brags about having lots of processing power, a dual-core 1.4GHz CPU no less. Well, how good is that, when it comes to VPN?

I don't know about you guys, but I have 250/250Mbps fiber (got it a couple of weeks ago). My PC's 8700K can handle that bandwidth (with Kaspersky Secure Connection it uses around 16% at 5GHz OC), but my router could probably not. With AirVPN I get 30Mbps +/- which, according to them, is very good. The thing is that until I told them about it, I got 100Mbps +/-, which shouldn't be possible, again according to them.

So the question is: What bandwidth is the maximum the RT-AC5300 can handle, via VPN?

[xeromist]

Your router is specialized hardware and software so it's pointless to compare it to your desktop PC clock speeds. If you are concerned the router is getting overwhelmed you can view the status page for CPU usage.

Most likely you will be limited by the throughput of the VPN provider or the destination site/service in almost every case. I'm not sure there's any provider that could guarantee a reliable 250/250 VPN connection. Such a service would be very expensive if it exists.

[Sverre]

xeromist wrote:
Your router is specialized hardware and software so it's pointless to compare it to your desktop PC clock speeds. If you are concerned the router is getting overwhelmed you can view the status page for CPU usage.

Most likely you will be limited by the throughput of the VPN provider or the destination site/service in almost every case. I'm not sure there's any provider that could guarantee a reliable 250/250 VPN connection. Such a service would be very expensive if it exists.

So when the supplier (AirVPN) says that 30/30 is the max that specific router can handle, they're lying? Kaspersky delivers reliable 250/250, but they don't support routers, sadly.

[ninezerofive]

I have 200/200 What I found out recently that all the servers are not the same and once I started to connect to those listed with higher speed users I started to see big difference :

https://airvpn.org/topusers/

[Sverre]

ninezerofive wrote:
I have 200/200 What I found out recently that all the servers are not the same and once I started to connect to those listed with higher speed users I started to see big difference :

https://airvpn.org/topusers/

The thing is that connecting to single servers in stead of groups can make you vulnerable. If that specific server goes down you loose VPN, and you don't know anything about it, if you aren't actively checking because the router has no "kill-switch" for VPN-loss.

[xeromist]

Sverre wrote:
So when the supplier (AirVPN) says that 30/30 is the max that specific router can handle, they're lying?

I would want to know where they got that number. Is it based on something ASUS published? Is it based on in-house testing at AirVPN? If it's based on their own testing what were the conditions of the test?

They may be right but without context it's a bit hard to trust. You yourself said you got 100Mbps which would make them wrong. I have found that ISPs (and by extension any network provider) are all too ready to blame slow speeds on someone else. It's an easy way out and they don't have to do anything.

[Sverre]

xeromist wrote:
I would want to know where they got that number. Is it based on something ASUS published? Is it based on in-house testing at AirVPN? If it's based on their own testing what were the conditions of the test?

They may be right but without context it's a bit hard to trust. You yourself said you got 100Mbps which would make them wrong. I have found that ISPs (and by extension any network provider) are all too ready to blame slow speeds on someone else. It's an easy way out and they don't have to do anything.

The problem is that I have no way of proving them wrong. I used to work with networks, but not at that level, and I don't have the equipment. That's why I was hoping someone here knew something. As is I just asked to return the router as I have a perfectly good router, from the ISP, but that one can't do VPN. But when I can't get VPN over 30Mbps, or no-one seems to know anything, I just can't justify using that much money on something that might not work. Sure, it has Tri-band and is probably better, but I don't need WI-Fi for anything other than my IPad, the rest is connected directly to the router.

[xeromist]

Sverre wrote:
The problem is that I have no way of proving them wrong. I used to work with networks, but not at that level, and I don't have the equipment. That's why I was hoping someone here knew something. As is I just asked to return the router as I have a perfectly good router, from the ISP, but that one can't do VPN. But when I can't get VPN over 30Mbps, or no-one seems to know anything, I just can't justify using that much money on something that might not work. Sure, it has Tri-band and is probably better, but I don't need WI-Fi for anything other than my IPad, the rest is connected directly to the router.

I understand. Tracing performance issues can be annoying when so many moving parts are involved. I guess if it was me I might test another VPN provider and see if things are any different. Most have an option to pay a smaller amount for a short usage period. Other than that you'd probably need more hardware to test with.

I don't suppose AirVPN provides a desktop client? That way you could try connecting to the same server with the router & your desktop.

[Sverre]

Finally got an answer from Asus. Basically it says "No, you can't use the AC5300 for VPN, unless you want to set up a VPN that everyone and their grandmother can hack, because no matter what we say in the commercial, it's a worthless piece of XXXX CPU". My router is on it's way back to the seller (they have a 30 day money-back guarantee).

---

Hi,

Regarding VPn and speed it heavily depends on what encryption etc that is used.
The simplier the VPN the easier for a router it is.
There are even VPN that requires that you almost have a dedicated computer for it to make sure it can handle the encryption quick enough and still let speed through.

What you could try for testing purposes is if OpenVPN works better and gives more speed also how much better it works directly on the computer.
When you use VPN on the router check the CPU, usage. If it reaches 100% that means their encryption is so advanced the router can't handle it and you need a stronger router (PC acting router) to handle it.

AES-256-CBC and AES-256-GCM which is super strong requires a lot of CPU to encrypt the connection and as then AC5300 uses a CPU that runs on low volt it may not be able to handle such strong encyption.

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