VPN-specific router advice

[worldburger]

I’m in the market for a VPN router. Wasn’t sure if this should have gone in the wireless buying advice section since it’s VPN specific. Feel free to correct if need be.

I’ve used client side VPN, but was curious about router vpn after reading the great reviews for the RT-AC86U while using vpn on the router.

I had wanted to simply purchase this model and be done with this as it looks to be such a great router. BUT I was trying to find a similar router that had tri-band. The reason for this being so I could use the 2nd 5Ghz as the wireless connection on the EX8000 extender to get a bit more coverage as well as hookup a gaming device that would benefit from the EX8000’s Ethernet connection (which is far away from the router and cannot be hardwired directly).

I have gigabit service, so a higher VPN speed would be nice. Possibly 10-20 devices total on the networks. Very old construction house. 3 stories + basement. I have considered mostly routers that could be used with Merlin, but as turnkey as possible is probably more ideal for my ignorance on a lot of the technical setup.​

Current hardware: Netgear X6 (R7900) on ground floor.
​

I’ve narrowed in on these:
GT-AC5300 (BCM4908)
TP-Link Archer C4000 (BCM4908)
R8000P (BCM4906)
R7900P (Costco’s R8000P) (BCM4906)
EA9300 (BCM4908)

EA9500 v2 (BCM4908)
EA9400 v2 (BCM4908)​

As I understand it, these Broadcom processors *should* give a better VPN performance similar to how the RT-AC86U gets such good VPN performance. Am I understanding that correctly?

Which of these would be advised?
Or would there be negligible impact simply going with the RT-AC86U with the EX8000?

I could use some advice. I’m sure I’ve left out some material information, so ask away if more details would be helpful.

First post, go easy Thanks in advance!​

Side note: the people in this forum (and Tim’s reviews) are amazing. I’ve benefited a ton over the years just reading which is a testament to the efforts of all that are active here, so thank you all!​

 

[Xentrk]

I’m in the market for a VPN router. Wasn’t sure if this should have gone in the wireless buying advice section since it’s VPN specific. Feel free to correct if need be.

I’ve used client side VPN, but was curious about router vpn after reading the great reviews for the RT-AC86U while using vpn on the router.

I had wanted to simply purchase this model and be done with this as it looks to be such a great router. BUT I was trying to find a similar router that had tri-band. The reason for this being so I could use the 2nd 5Ghz as the wireless connection on the EX8000 extender to get a bit more coverage as well as hookup a gaming device that would benefit from the EX8000’s Ethernet connection (which is far away from the router and cannot be hardwired directly).

I have gigabit service, so a higher VPN speed would be nice. Possibly 10-20 devices total on the networks. Very old construction house. 3 stories + basement. I have considered mostly routers that could be used with Merlin, but as turnkey as possible is probably more ideal for my ignorance on a lot of the technical setup.​

Current hardware: Netgear X6 (R7900) on ground floor.
​

I’ve narrowed in on these:
GT-AC5300 (BCM4908)
TP-Link Archer C4000 (BCM4908)
R8000P (BCM4906)
R7900P (Costco’s R8000P) (BCM4906)
EA9300 (BCM4908)

EA9500 v2 (BCM4908)
EA9400 v2 (BCM4908)​

As I understand it, these Broadcom processors *should* give a better VPN performance similar to how the RT-AC86U gets such good VPN performance. Am I understanding that correctly?

Which of these would be advised?
Or would there be negligible impact simply going with the RT-AC86U with the EX8000?

I could use some advice. I’m sure I’ve left out some material information, so ask away if more details would be helpful.

First post, go easy Thanks in advance!​

Side note: the people in this forum (and Tim’s reviews) are amazing. I’ve benefited a ton over the years just reading which is a testament to the efforts of all that are active here, so thank you all!​

I set up a an RT-AC86U for a friend and did not experience improved OpenVPN performance compared to my RT-AC88U. I was very disappointed especially after seeing others on the forum post their results.

I ended up taking an old Wins 7 PC and converting it to a pfSense appliance. I use an Asus RT-AC68U as an access point. The CPU is intel i5 and with AES-NI acceleration, I am able to get 6 to 7 times the VPN performance than I did on the AC88U and even more over Ethernet connection. My primary use case is selective routing over 3 vpn tunnels and the WAN interface. It can all be done thru the Web Gui whereas on the Asus I had to write scripts. So, between my desire to chase bandwidth and the ease of being able to implement my selective routing use case, I ended up choosing an old PC converted to a pfSense box as my primary router. I still use Asuswrt on several sites I support and still write programs for the Asuswrt router.

I wrote a post on the experience on my blog site if you want to read it. https://x3mtek.com/openvpn-performance/

Eventually, I will buy one of the newly released desktop appliances from Netgate to have a smaller foot print and less fan noise.

Update: My noise ended up coming from my video card. The PC video connection stopped working was the first clue, then the fan started making a bunch of noise. I bought a new video card and it's very quiet now. The fan on the video card is 4x as big as the old card too.

 

[doczenith1]

I have considered mostly routers that could be used with Merlin, but as turnkey as possible is probably more ideal for my ignorance on a lot of the technical setup.

I’ve narrowed in on these:
GT-AC5300 (BCM4908)
TP-Link Archer C4000 (BCM4908)
R8000P (BCM4906)
R7900P (Costco’s R8000P) (BCM4906)
EA9300 (BCM4908)

EA9500 v2 (BCM4908)
EA9400 v2 (BCM4908)​

None of the routers you have listed are compatible with Asuswrt-Merlin firmware. A list of compatible routers can be found here https://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/about

 

[lostcowboy]

So you have to have tri-band,that takes you out of the sweet spot, and on to the expensive router's. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0167HG1V6/?tag=snbforums-20 this is the ASUS router you want then.

Please understand that it does not come with the hardware acceleration enabled that everyone is talking about. The only way you get that enabled is to flash a third party firmware onto your modem. That will void your modem. The Merlin firmware will do it.

Let's talk about your house, have you found where your signal is weak at yet? You need to do that first. You need a tablet or phone that can connect to both 2.5G and 5G you need a WiFi Analyzer app, I use the one by farproc it is free and very reliable. You also need a speed test app, I like Fast by Netflix as it uses the Netflix servers to do the test with.
Start in the room that your main router will be in, in WiFi Analyzer go to the channel rating window, select your wifi it will show you the channel you should be on for best performance. Do this for both 2.5G and 5G, change setting in router.
Now go in to each room of house, to the spot where you think WiFi will be used, write down signal strength and do a speed test and write that down to.
Once done you will have a good ideal of where your range extender needs to go. It may be that you need more than one extender.
Depending on the make and model of your old router you may be able to use third party firmware to make it into a extender. I have flashed a old router with https://dd-wrt.com/ before, I really liked the results.