Will I see a huge improvement?

[flowrider]

Will I notice a huge improvement in throughput if I return my N66U and get an AC68U? I'm running OpenVPN to tunnel my traffic to PrivateInternetAccess VPN service. Right now with no VPN running I get 25Mbps down and 6Mbps up. Running the PIA through the router I get about 8Mbps down and the same up.

I'll fork out the extra dough for the AC68 if I can get better throughput.

 

[RMerlin]

Will I notice a huge improvement in throughput if I return my N66U and get an AC68U? I'm running OpenVPN to tunnel my traffic to PrivateInternetAccess VPN service. Right now with no VPN running I get 25Mbps down and 6Mbps up. Running the PIA through the router I get about 8Mbps down and the same up.

I'll fork out the extra dough for the AC68 if I can get better throughput.

All depends on whether PIA's server are a bottleneck, your ISP is a bottleneck, or the router is.

One easy way to test is to configure OpenVPN on a PC, then test performance. If it's close to 8 Mbps, then no, you won't benefit from a faster router. If however it reaches higher speeds, then it means your router CPU is the bottleneck, in which case an RT-AC56 or RT-AC68 would help.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Most all if not all SOHO routers don't have a beefy enough processor or enough RAM to handle VPN throughput quickly. If you get 15 Mbps down with your connection this is probably the best you can do.

If you are willing to spend money at solving the problem look at buying a N66U or other router from Sabai Technology loaded with their modified Tomato software which is optimized for running a VPN. Their firmware includes a lot a nice VPN related features including dual gateway so you can select by LAN IP which devices to route using your VPN. Even with their firmware 18 Mbps would be pushing it. Even the best firmware can only do so much with an under powered processor.

If you still aren't satisfied with the speed, then when ever you have a few hundred more dollars to spend on your quest for speed, add Sabai's VPN accelerator to your network setup and this should get you 95% of your 25 Mbps download speed, assuming your VPN provider has a server located within a few hundred miles of your actual location.

This VPN setup works very well for me and I can get 70+ Mbps when running a VPN connection to a VPN server 225 miles distant.

If you are interested in Sabai gear call them and talk to their technical staff. Their staff is super well qualified and very friendly both before and after the sale. Best support I have had on any product I have ever bought anywhere.

 

[RMerlin]

Most all if not all SOHO routers don't have a beefy enough processor or enough RAM to handle VPN throughput quickly. If you get 15 Mbps down with your connection this is probably the best you can do.

Running iperf through an OpenVPN tunnel on an RT-AC56, I was able to reach 60 Mbps. The RT-AC66, for comparing, topped at around 22 Mbps.

This was with my optimized code however. Stock firmware would be close to 17 Mbps on the AC66 - and I never tested it on the AC68.

 

[stevech]

Running iperf through an OpenVPN tunnel on an RT-AC56, I was able to reach 60 Mbps. The RT-AC66, for comparing, topped at around 22 Mbps.

This was with my optimized code however. Stock firmware would be close to 17 MB/s on the AC66 - and I never tested it on the AC68.

Just a likely typo.
Mind the b's and B's !!

 

[RMerlin]

Just a likely typo.
Mind the b's and B's !!

Ya, no way stock firmware would be 10x faster