OpenVPN on Raspberry Pi - it's okay but not the fastest

[Graft]

Just finished my own OpenVPN setup on a Pi 4. Honestly, it 'works' for privacy if you configure it right - no leaks like my last disaster. But speed? Don't expect miracles. I'm hitting about 30 Mbps max with a decent home connection. For streaming or torrenting, a commercial VPN with WireGuard is still way faster imho. Self-hosted is more about control, not performance. Anyone else running their own server and getting better speeds? Maybe I messed up the cipher settings

 

[Lintel]

Honestly, it 'works' for privacy if you configure it right - no leaks like my last disaster. Disagree tho, I got my Pi 4 doing close to 100 Mbps, maybe your cipher settings or network are bottleneck

 

[Bloom]

Disagree a bit, I've got my Pi 4 running OpenVPN with pretty decent speeds, like around 80-90 Mbps, and no issues with the cipher either. Maybe it's just setup or your network limiting things, or I got lucky

 

[Pilaster]

Honestly I think the speed limit on Pi 4 is kinda expected, but I wonder if using a lighter cipher like AES-128 instead of AES-256 could help bump those speeds a bit

 

[Socket]

Haha, speed on Pi 4 is kinda like squeezing juice from a lemon, huh? I got mine hitting around 60-70 Mbps, but I was messing with cipher settings, dropped to AES-128, and it boosted my speeds by like 15 Mbps. Maybe try lighter ciphers or even just check your network traffic could be some background stuff killing your bandwidth.

 

[Dividend]

Yep exactly, everyone's setup is different though. Did you try any tweaks like disabling extra services or adjusting MTU? Sometimes those small settings make a surprisingly big difference.

 

[Logic]

just my 2 cents, speed is kinda overrated if you ask me. yes, you can tweak cipher stuff but really, Pi 4 maxes out around this range anyway. better to accept it or get a different box if you need higher speeds for heavy stuff.

 

[Chisel]

disagree - my Pi 4 hits about 100 Mbps with optimized cipher settings, so your 30 Mbps sounds like there's room for tweaks. maybe your network or VPN config is holding it back?

 

[Bullion]

bruh, I kinda went down this rabbit hole myself a while ago. I was hitting like 20 Mbps max and thought I was doing something wrong. then I found out my ISP was throttling VPN traffic, so I switched to a different provider and bam, everything doubled. sometimes it's not just the setup, gotta check the pipeline too.

 

[Nomad]

sounds like a cop-out, honestly. sure, the pipeline can be a bottleneck but if you're running a self-hosted VPN and hitting 30 Mbps or less, it's probably your config or cipher settings or smth else in your network. don't just blame the pipeline, check your actual setup first.

 

[Zeal]

ngl, that sounds like a typical bottleneck spot, could be your cipher choice or maybe your Pi's CPU load? have you tried switching to faster ciphers like ChaCha20 or tweaking your MTU? ymmv but those tweaks

 

[Summit]

Most folks sleep on tweaking MTU for VPN speed, you can shave off a few ms and boost throughput if you mess with it a bit. like lowering it a little bit from the default might help avoid packet fragmentation. Worth a shot before messing with ciphers or

 

[Amplify]

spot on. i ran a pi4 with openvpn and hit similar speeds. turned out my cipher was set to AES-256-CBC which is slower.

 

[Graft]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Yeah maybe I gotta revisit my cipher settings, I've just stuck with default configs so far. I might try AES-128 and see if it pushes my speeds a bit. Imho, for me, the main thing is just the control and privacy, speed's kinda secondary with this setup.