Slow VPN speeds
I have a simple Ubuntu OpenVPN setup and I am getting terrible speeds from it. I know VPNs knock your throughput but this seems excessive.
What are the things I should check?
2 Replies
Hello,
First, check to make sure the speed between your computer and the data center you're using with Linode is slow. If network trafic between you and the data center where your Linode is located is slow, none of these suggestions will be helpful. Check your speed at all the data centers to find one that may be suitable if your current data center isn't.
On OpenVPN, I believe that using UDP over TCP can help increase your bandwidth through the VPN.
Also, enabling compression can help in some cases, though it may have higher demands on the CPU of the server and client.
The level of encryption may have an effect on speed, higher levels of encryption may slow down your speed, such as using 4096 bit keys over 2048.
Finally, you could try another VPN server, such as Wireguard to see if that works any better on a temporary basis.
There may be others with some different suggestions, but those were what I could think of immediately. Good luck!
Blake
Hi @tech10,
I'm having a similar issue with my Nanode 1GB shared plan used as a Wireguard VPN Server.
My client runs Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS with the standard MTU of 1420 and 256 bit encryption. The server is hosted in london and performing a linode speed test with this location gives me a reduction in download speed by half when wg is "up" as opposed to "down". Can my plan be responsible for this?
Edit: performing a speedtest from the linode VPN Server itself shows download speeds orders of magnitude higher than what I am getting from the client, so I guess the problem is either
- MTU - looking around online suggest the default value 1420 should be fine, huge improvements not to be expected playing around with this
- Encryption - default 256 bit is the standard for Wireguard and as Wireguard is often claimed to be faster than other VPN protocols I can't see this being the problem, but I could try 128 to see if I get an improvement
- My ISP/internet connection - not likely as I can use OpenVPN on Windows instead of Wireguard on Ubuntu and I get the full download speed
Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!