RussellInCincinnati
Senior Member
An associate just bought two RT-AC86u's for $360 dollars. Merlin firmware makes it pretty easy to use this machine to maintain an OpenVPN encrypted tunnel to a VPN service at over 200 megabits per second. And Merlin reports that the '86u does IPSEC encryption at near 300 megabits per second.
It seems like Merlin firmware makes the '86u into a great buy as a VPN appliance, where you sorta get the WiFi radios and USB ports "for free." Heck if you just want a VPN appliance, buy the thing and turn off the '86u radios...to further minimize the power draw down to just the BCM4906 cpu/RAM and the Ethernet ports.
Another associate has set up their '86u as a 200Mbps wireless VPN appliance, with the '86u not only providing nearby wired VPN service, but it is using it's 5 gigahertz radio to communicate at 1.3 gigahertz (nominal link speed) to an old, not-too-far-away-but-not-easily-wired RT-AC66u repeater. The '66u in turn is in the perfect central place to be a single source of VPN'd WiFi signal for their entire site.
Spent some time yesterday trying to find low-power, small, easy-to-use VPN appliances for less than $200 dollars, in a ready-to-go consumer housing, that with almost no work or VPN knowledge function as 25-37 megabyte-per-second (something like full USB 2.0 speed) OpenVPN or IPSec encryption appliances that could be installed between any existing network router/WiFi and the internet.
Sure you could buy a really cheap laptop (with only one ethernet port) or single board computer (Raspberry PI etc with one port) or USB compute stick (one port) for less than $200 dollars, some of which could be even faster than the '86u. But installing Linux/Windows/whatever onto one of those devices and configuring it to be a multi-port, rock-stable VPN appliance (let alone with ultra-strong WiFi relaying capability) is a ridiculously time-consuming science project, compared to getting OpenVPN set up on Merlin firmware.
So, ignoring WiFi and USB file sharing capabilities, could someone point me to a VPN appliance as performant/15-watts-or-so/small/easy for newbies to set up/stable as a Merlin'ed RT-AC86u for less than $200 dollars?
It seems like Merlin firmware makes the '86u into a great buy as a VPN appliance, where you sorta get the WiFi radios and USB ports "for free." Heck if you just want a VPN appliance, buy the thing and turn off the '86u radios...to further minimize the power draw down to just the BCM4906 cpu/RAM and the Ethernet ports.
Another associate has set up their '86u as a 200Mbps wireless VPN appliance, with the '86u not only providing nearby wired VPN service, but it is using it's 5 gigahertz radio to communicate at 1.3 gigahertz (nominal link speed) to an old, not-too-far-away-but-not-easily-wired RT-AC66u repeater. The '66u in turn is in the perfect central place to be a single source of VPN'd WiFi signal for their entire site.
Spent some time yesterday trying to find low-power, small, easy-to-use VPN appliances for less than $200 dollars, in a ready-to-go consumer housing, that with almost no work or VPN knowledge function as 25-37 megabyte-per-second (something like full USB 2.0 speed) OpenVPN or IPSec encryption appliances that could be installed between any existing network router/WiFi and the internet.
Sure you could buy a really cheap laptop (with only one ethernet port) or single board computer (Raspberry PI etc with one port) or USB compute stick (one port) for less than $200 dollars, some of which could be even faster than the '86u. But installing Linux/Windows/whatever onto one of those devices and configuring it to be a multi-port, rock-stable VPN appliance (let alone with ultra-strong WiFi relaying capability) is a ridiculously time-consuming science project, compared to getting OpenVPN set up on Merlin firmware.
So, ignoring WiFi and USB file sharing capabilities, could someone point me to a VPN appliance as performant/15-watts-or-so/small/easy for newbies to set up/stable as a Merlin'ed RT-AC86u for less than $200 dollars?
