Router recommendations for use with VPN

Clecko

Hi all,

Possibly not the forum for this, but thought I'd give it a go. I recently subscribed to IPVanish and have installed it on my Raspberry Pi. However, I have Virgin Fibre with a SuperHub 3 and am finding that the bandwidth is being throttled significantly.

Having had a read around, the only real answer seems to be to put the Virgin router into modem mode and add a new router with VPN installed after it. I could change provider, but don't fancy the other options and easily having all of our devices connect via VPN without the need for configuration of each device appeals.

Stability, relative ease of use and good WiFi distribution are all important and I trying not to pay less than I need to (though don't want to spring for an enterprise unit for domestic use).

Thanks to anyone with advice to share!      

octatonic

Specifically shat are you trying to do with a VPN?

I stopped using IPVanish and now use Unlocator.
It is much more efficient and we have no problems getting iPlayer outside the UK (our main use for it).

Think carefully if installing VPN on the router will work for you.
There are several instances where doing so will be less convenient than making it per device.
Some services might not work as expected.

My wife's work computer wouldn't connect at all because it had its own VPN trying to route through another VPN.
In our Swiss house we couldn't use the local IP-based TV because it thought it was outside Switzerland.
If you have Virgin media and want to use catch up TV it might not work because again the box will think it is outside the region.

My advice would be to use a better VPN or Smart DNS rather than putting VPN on the router.

Snags

In the general case, Asus and Zyxel make reasonable SoHo level routers. As do Netgear sometimes. These days at that level I tend to favour Asus.

You'll also get a lot of recommendations for TP-Link as they're ubiquitous, and they're "OK" but not top of my personal list, he said diplomatically.

However, if you're going to set the VPN up on the router itself, rather than using a 'soft' VPN on your device, you'd be well advised to go for one that comes with setup info and known compatibility with your VPN service provider, as it can save a whole world of pain.

As @octatonic says above, personally unless you specifically need to put the whole LAN behind a single VPN, I'd be looking at using a software client on the endpoint, rather than doing it on the router.

Clecko

Thanks guys. This may have been a useful question to ask!

As a matter of general privacy, the idea of having all devices connected to my network being able to access the internet anonymously appeals, hence the thought of a VPN-level router. However, it sounds like that might not be as straightforward as I thought. Though I'd imagined a lot of the regional issues outlined above could be circumnavigated by connecting to a UK-based server?

We use the Pi for everything from internet radio to Spotify, iPlayer and YouTube to Mame and some use of Exodus and the like. The main aim of whatever comes next is to stop the Virgin router throttling the bandwidth of the Raspberry Pi while it has a VPN running, so any advice on the best way to do that gratefully received.

Snags

My standard approach with any Virgin connection is to go get a decent router and put the hub in modem mode anyway, as a matter of course. So you're not going to be losing by doing that

octatonic

Snags said:

My standard approach with any Virgin connection is to go get a decent router and put the hub in modem mode anyway, as a matter of course. So you're not going to be losing by doing that

Agreed- the virgin router is shite- Modem mode all the way.

I use a Fritzbox 7490.
It is excellent.

Clecko

Agreed- the virgin router is shite- Modem mode all the way.

I use a Fritzbox 7490.
It is excellent.

One of the things I'm most stuck on, with a dazzling array of options, is which router to go for. Are there obvious benefits to a £225 router like the Fritzbox compared with, say, a £125 Linksys or Asus?

Emp_Fab

I've heard good things about using a router flashed with DD-WRT firmware.

octatonic

Clecko said:

Agreed- the virgin router is shite- Modem mode all the way.

I use a Fritzbox 7490.
It is excellent.

One of the things I'm most stuck on, with a dazzling array of options, is which router to go for. Are there obvious benefits to a £225 router like the Fritzbox compared with, say, a £125 Linksys or Asus?

In my instance it also manages telephone lines and acts as an answering machine, sending me recordings of the messages by email.
It also acts as a DECT basestation, media server and will even do ISDN if you need it.
If you don't need this features then maybe not.

Clecko

octatonic said:
In my instance it also manages telephone lines and acts as an answering machine, sending me recordings of the messages by email.

It also acts as a DECT basestation, media server and will even do ISDN if you need it.
If you don't need this features then maybe not.

Thanks man. No, I just need it to sit between the Virgin box and shuffle internet from that to various connected and wireless devices.

Clecko

Following some further reading, there's no way to install a VPN natively on Echo devices, and I'd really like to do that, so more reading on VPN routers.

Snags

It's really going to depend on the VPN service you're using.

If your VPN provider just lets you set up a standard IPSec or similar tunnel, then most any half-decent VPN router will do it (although some will be harder to get working than others).

If you actually need to install a specific package, rather than just configure an industry-standard set of options, then you're going to need something that lets you get a bit more low-down and dirty (e.g. a box running pfsense, or a home-rolled solution).

Clecko

Think this is the plan: https://support.ipvanish.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002080733-DD-WRT-v3-Router-Setup

notanon

Is this to access your own network? I'm in the process of setting up a replacement for my Qnap with openvpn on server on there. I've picked up a cheap Gigabyte Brix and going to install XigmaNAS.

Clecko

notanon said:

Is this to access your own network?

Yup - basically a huge workaround of the Virgin router!

Jimbro66

I can see this is potentially a very interesting and informative thread  -  if only it had subtitles  

nanoman

I've got an Asus AC68U router running Merlin firmware behind my Virgin Superhub3 in modem mode. It's great but when i had Open VPN configured on it with my Private Internet Access VPN details my 200Mbps connection was throttled to around 35 - 40 Mbps so I went down the client VPN route wherever possible. I think most of the bottleneck is CPU on the router. It takes a fair bit of grunt to encap/decap traffic from 20 odd devices and Internet hungry teenagers

Clecko

OK, interesting. For the sake of affirmative action, I bought a TP-Link C7 on my way home from work on Friday. Very simple to set up alongside the Virgin Hub and the immediate benefits are clear - stronger, less temperamental wifi and substantially better performance from my Pi running a VPN client. I haven't bothered installing a VPN on the router so far.

vasselmeyer

I have a Virgin Superhub in modem mode and for my router and wireless requirements I use a Google Wifi mesh system. This is mainly because I live in an old brick terrace with thick walls and a single wireless point means the wifi is really spotty throughout the property. A mesh system fixes that.

However, I also do run some devices with VPNs, but I don't like the "whole network VPN" model because it severely restricts geo-located services such as iPlayer and Netflix. I access those through "smart" boxes, in my case, an NVidia Shield and a Roku 3. Those go on my guest network to which I also allow guests to connect (surprisingly). I isolate these as they do snoop on the network for other devices and services and call home. On my main network I have my NAS, my Plex server and a PiHole which does network-level adblocking and DHCP. If I want VPN access, and I run it all the time on my main PC, I just have it running per device.

By the way, if anyone's using Private Internet Access as their VPN, you should know they've just agreed to being bought out by a rather shady Romanian outfit called Kape, who have been caught distributing malware , in their own software. My subscription expires in February, but I'm not waiting and as soon as the sale is finalised, I'm moving to TORGuard or ProtonVPN. I'll probably post this as a PSA as well.

Clecko

@vasselmeyer ; - that's really useful. Thanks. How much do you tend to see your download speed reduce when running the VPN? I'm on Virgin 100Mbps and am seeing speedtest on the Pi top out around 85Mbps with no VPN running and around half of that once it's switched on.

vasselmeyer

@Clecko ;;Firstly, try using fast.com instead of Speedtest. Fast is run by Netflix and gives a more realistic test than the Speedtest site. My Pi is only running Pihole so it's all internal. All it does is act as the DNS and DHCP server for the rest of my network so its not any kind of bottleneck.

I'm also on Virgin with the 70Mbps tariff and I hit that consistently whether I'm on a VPN or not. Because of the PIA acquisition, I just signed up for a month of Mullvad VPN (5€, just to see what sort of performance it gives me) and it maxed out at 70Mbps on both my Ubuntu box and my Windows 10 machine.

As long as you're running a modern wireless system and/or gigabit Ethernet in your house, the limiting factor is going to be your ISP connection and the VPN gateway.