Arthur Daley
DW Regular
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2012
- Messages
- 193
- Reaction score
- 100
Like a lot of people on here I have ran a VPN for many years. Initially from my PC via some application but then moved on to using a second router, flashed with DD-WRT and wired in tandem, to my virgin media router. This enabled me to use the vm router if I needed full speed access for everyday things and use the VPN enabled router for the protection of a VPN connection.
This setup has lasted me well over the years. I have used several different routers over this time, each one being slightly faster than the previous one, in terms of CPU Mhz. I also branched from using DD-WRT to Tomato to Asus Merlin and finally to Advanced Tomato.
However, recently I have increased my internet connection from 100MB to 350MB and discovered that the VPN router I was using was causing a crippling bottleneck, as far as my VPN throughput was concerned. It didn't bother me previously that my vm internet speed was 100MB but I was only getting 50-60MB via my VPN router, but having a vm speed of 350MB and a VPN speed of 60MB tops brings the limitations of that particular setup very much to the fore.
Wanting something better I stumbled upon pfSense and OPNsense software systems. These generally rely on a PC style architecture to run their firewall software as well as providing many other useful addons, such as VPN, AD blocking, etc., so I bought an old thin client PC, installed another network card, giving two altogether, and set about playing with the firewall software. This firewall and VPN solution proved successful and convinced me that a newer tech version is what I was going to have.
Upon many hours surfing the net I stumbled upon these type of mini PC's that are becoming increasingly popular for this type of setup...
xcy - Achat en ligne | Aliexpress
I initially had my doubts buying from AliExpress but decided to give it a try as I had PayPal to fall back on. I needn't have worried as only 8 days later my new toy had arrived. I purchased a bare bones version as I already had suitable ram memory and ssd drives to put inside. Once this was done I spent several days trying it out and have been most impressed with the setup.
Below is a speed test from my virgin media router...
Below is that from my PC connected to the pfSense system running my OpenVPN connection...
As you can see there is practically no decrease in my download speed and my upload speed slight drop maybe due to the particular server I am connecting to, but either way it is quite impressive and uses no more than 30% of my pfSenses's hardware CPU at this speed, meaning that it could well cope with the top vm speeds without any bottleneck occurring.
Anyway, I have several other things to try with this, namely adding an access point to enable wifi. I have had an internal wifi card in the box, similar to that used in laptops, and installed external aerials but this kind of wifi is not regarded as the better option, in particular wifi 6 is not well supported by pfSense at the moment, so the addition of an access point is the preferred way to go.
Hope someone finds this extremely long and tedious post useful and maybe inspires them to have a tinker also
This setup has lasted me well over the years. I have used several different routers over this time, each one being slightly faster than the previous one, in terms of CPU Mhz. I also branched from using DD-WRT to Tomato to Asus Merlin and finally to Advanced Tomato.
However, recently I have increased my internet connection from 100MB to 350MB and discovered that the VPN router I was using was causing a crippling bottleneck, as far as my VPN throughput was concerned. It didn't bother me previously that my vm internet speed was 100MB but I was only getting 50-60MB via my VPN router, but having a vm speed of 350MB and a VPN speed of 60MB tops brings the limitations of that particular setup very much to the fore.
Wanting something better I stumbled upon pfSense and OPNsense software systems. These generally rely on a PC style architecture to run their firewall software as well as providing many other useful addons, such as VPN, AD blocking, etc., so I bought an old thin client PC, installed another network card, giving two altogether, and set about playing with the firewall software. This firewall and VPN solution proved successful and convinced me that a newer tech version is what I was going to have.
Upon many hours surfing the net I stumbled upon these type of mini PC's that are becoming increasingly popular for this type of setup...
xcy - Achat en ligne | Aliexpress
I initially had my doubts buying from AliExpress but decided to give it a try as I had PayPal to fall back on. I needn't have worried as only 8 days later my new toy had arrived. I purchased a bare bones version as I already had suitable ram memory and ssd drives to put inside. Once this was done I spent several days trying it out and have been most impressed with the setup.
Below is a speed test from my virgin media router...
Below is that from my PC connected to the pfSense system running my OpenVPN connection...
As you can see there is practically no decrease in my download speed and my upload speed slight drop maybe due to the particular server I am connecting to, but either way it is quite impressive and uses no more than 30% of my pfSenses's hardware CPU at this speed, meaning that it could well cope with the top vm speeds without any bottleneck occurring.
Anyway, I have several other things to try with this, namely adding an access point to enable wifi. I have had an internal wifi card in the box, similar to that used in laptops, and installed external aerials but this kind of wifi is not regarded as the better option, in particular wifi 6 is not well supported by pfSense at the moment, so the addition of an access point is the preferred way to go.
Hope someone finds this extremely long and tedious post useful and maybe inspires them to have a tinker also
