Can distibuting devices over seperate Merlin VPN instances increase throughput?

[Luboknok]

For instance putting a browsing PC on a separate VPN slot as a internet TV. It seems like combining all devices through a single VPN can lead to a single misbehaving device to slow down the tunnel for all devices. Router CPU itself isn't breaking a sweat.

 

[CaptainSTX]

On a ASUS router with Merlin flashed you can run up to five VPN clients. The issue is that most VPN providers will only will let you run only only one instance of a VPN client on your router either by design or by the fact they only support connections on one port. PIA supports VPN connections on eleven ports. Each port has its own specifications and requirements and not all of the requirements are supported by Merlin's firmware.

Another possible benefit of running multiple VPNs is you would then have multiple public IPs which you might consider a security benefit. You would run your IoT devices on one VPN with its public IP and your other devices would have another IP. Something to consider if you are paranoid and don't want to be geo located based on your public IP.

 

[Luboknok]

My VPN allows multiple connections on the router so I went ahead and segmented desktops, wireless, tvs ect into several different VPN slots in Merlin.

The difference is night and day. I had slowdown problems for a year that this has fixed. Now I am easily getting 2-3x consistently. I suggest everyone try it.

 

[dosborne]

I've been running multiple VPN for a while now. Low traffic IoT stuff runs off a free service and I have 2x paid services which services specific high volume traffic. All of them combined don't even come close to my max ISP bandwidth so using multiple services is a definite benefit.

 

[CaptainSTX]

combined don't even come close to my max ISP bandwidth

The real issue for the router is the load on the processor. If you run a high bandwidth applications such as a speed test simultaneously on each VPN client you can max out the processors. The speed tests, plus VPN processing and then add in WiFi all add up and take processing cycles.

With your multiple VPN setup you would probably be best served by balancing the processor load by running the VPN client for IoT devices on the processor 2 (VPN clients 2 & 4 ) where the router functions run since the data bandwidth requirements are minimal and then run your VPN for higher demand clients on processor 1 (Clients 1,3, & 5).

 

[dosborne]

With your multiple VPN setup you would probably be best served by balancing the processor load..............

Great advice for most users. In my specific case however, I have a router (ok 2x routers) that are otherwise "spares" so *all* they do is provide the VPN gateway. No wireless or other functions

 

[CaptainSTX]

Similar to the setup I have. The AC86 runs three VPN clients. The first client is for IoT devices, the second client is only used only if the primary WiFi network on my Double NATed router is unavailable, the third client uses a Swedish server so that my wife can get content from Sweden by connecting to a particular guest network on the AC86.

Behind the AC86 I have another router double NATed and the VPN runs on a VPN server with an I7 processor.

And finally my desktop runs its own VPN.

Complicated, probably unnecessary redundancy and not really that secure for many reasons related to commercial VPNs, but like you I have the hardware so why not.