MakeItRain
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I use Raspberry Pi OpenVPN. It works SUPERBly. No issues whatsoever.
What is everyone using for VPN service provider?
- Thread starter rufunky
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catcamstar
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I might have missed you mentioning your ASUS model, but if you can deploy Rmerlin firmware on your ASUS, I am pretty sure the OpenVPN server gets updated and even better: you'll get access to the latest (and more secure!) VPN encryption options. Do never use PPTP, it is the most insecure way of connecting, same level as people with port forwards.
PS. your ASUS can also serve as OpenVPN client, which can, as explained above, "encrypt/disguish" your outbound WAN access. It does require an OpenVPN server service "at the other side" of the tunnel. Many services are free, but do not trust those. Better be safe than sorry is my opinion.
PS. your ASUS can also serve as OpenVPN client, which can, as explained above, "encrypt/disguish" your outbound WAN access. It does require an OpenVPN server service "at the other side" of the tunnel. Many services are free, but do not trust those. Better be safe than sorry is my opinion.
What are your speeds when going through the VPN and are you using the Raspberry Pi 3 B+?
MakeItRain
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Yes its a version 3, I don't think it's a 3B+.
I'm on AT&T Fiber internet. I get 170Mbps down, 120Mbps up at home. When I'm outdoors and using VPN, the Raspberry Pi has to encrypt the traffic and send it out, this is the speed I'm getting on my phone:
The Raspberry Pi 3 is sending to me at 60Mbps and receiving at 33Mbps. This is plenty fast enough to view even 32 cameras live stream at sub-stream quality. Currently, I can live-view watch 14 with no hiccups.
Cupofschmoe
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When connecting to your VPN (OpenVPN or similar) your connection speed is dependent on your ISP's upload speed, correct?
My ISP service is a 400d/10u so I connect in remotely to my network so my max download speed is roughly around my ISP's upload limit.
One night I was thinking that maybe my router's hardware was not up to par and limiting my remote download speed and I was looking into faster processing routers or making one but then a light bulb turned on and I realize it would be a waste...Can someone confirm my thought?
My ISP service is a 400d/10u so I connect in remotely to my network so my max download speed is roughly around my ISP's upload limit.
One night I was thinking that maybe my router's hardware was not up to par and limiting my remote download speed and I was looking into faster processing routers or making one but then a light bulb turned on and I realize it would be a waste...Can someone confirm my thought?
Yes different encryption methods will be different speed depending on your processing power of the cpu. I once setup openvpn on a cheap $40CAD router and the speeds were about 5Mbps only.
OpenVPN - estimate performance via OpenVPN
OpenVPN - estimate performance via OpenVPN
catcamstar
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Best is to use a speedtester to see if you would saturate your 10 uplink. Call this A. Then measure what your bandwidth would be when viewing your video footage. Call this B. If B>A, you are already in trouble. If B<A you're already good.
Take note of the following points:
- when not at home, you might not need your first stream (full HD), a substream might be good "enough"
- VPN does use resources, perfomance will decrease when you give it low resources (see encryption/compression settings in the post above), but your ISP bandwidth will not vary.
Good luck!
CC
J Sigmo
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@rufunky : Something that needs to be pointed out is this:
OpenVPN DOES sell a VPN service that you must pay for, and which is the type of VPN you DON'T want for this application. I'm sure it's a fine VPN service.
But, they also give away for free their OpenVPN client software that many of us use to connect to the VPNs that we run on our systems at home (or wherever).
I ran into this only when I was first setting up OpenVPN on a PC I have at work. I had already set up the VPN server on my Asus router at home, and had installed the OpenVPN client app on two phones. None of that was confusing, and at no time was I faced with two possible choices of what to download and use.
But when setting up that Windows PC to have an OpenVPN client, so that I can view my security cams from work (or access anything else on my home network securely), I ran into the snag to which the OP is referring.
In fact, I downloaded and installed what I thought was the correct OpenVPN program on that PC, only to find that it then needed me to subscribe to their paid VPN service. And, of course, that wouldn't have done me any good, anyhow.
So I had to uninstall that program and then find the OpenVPN client that I actually needed. Once I did that, and set it up with a username and password on my router at home, and then exported the encryption key and installed that on the PC, it works like a champ.
Indeed, it's free. And it lets me securely access my home network from work on that PC, just as the Android OpenVPN client app lets me connect from anywhere on my phone and my wife's.
There are good reasons to use a VPN service, as well. But for accessing your home (or whatever) LAN securely, from anywhere, you need to set up your own VPN server, at your home (or whatever).
So we all need to be aware that when you visit the OpenVPN website, what you're most likely to run into first, is their paid VPN service. I am not at a PC now, but somewhere, I think I have a link that will get you to where you need to be if you want to download the VPN client that you need to access your home VPN server from a windows PC.
I don't remember it being hard to find the phone/tablet app for it. It was either the first, or the only OpenVPN app. But finding the same thing for a PC was confusing to me.
And keep in mind that you only need the OpenVPN client for a PC if you want to access your home LAN remotely on a PC somewhere outside of your home LAN (like me viewing my home cameras from a PC at work).
It's something you would likely want to put on a laptop PC so you can check your cams from anywhere when traveling, for example. You could also use it to securely surf from, for example, a hotel or airport WiFi which would otherwise be highly insecure!
That's one of the advantages of any VPN. But with your own VPN set up at your home, you can view your cameras as well as, surf, stream, or whatever, and it's the same as if you were at home logged into your own WiFi.
It works like a charm, by the way. But I have upload speed of at least 10Mbps, and download speed of 100Mbps at home. I can also stream Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, etc., through the tunnel, too, and at least at 1080P, it appears to be no different than when I do this directly via the ISP at work.
It's a bit silly to do it, but it shows that the feed can download to my house, be encrypted by the router, piped back out through the upload side of my ISP at home, then download that encrypted stream at work, and have it decrypted and then shown on my PC at work. And it's pretty lame PC at work, so it kind of amazes me.
This may not be as impressive as streaming the camera feed from home, actually, but all of this is just amazing to me.
Anyhow, be careful which product you download from OpenVPN if you're looking for the PC client that you need for accessing your home VPN server. It was confusing to me, too!
OpenVPN DOES sell a VPN service that you must pay for, and which is the type of VPN you DON'T want for this application. I'm sure it's a fine VPN service.
But, they also give away for free their OpenVPN client software that many of us use to connect to the VPNs that we run on our systems at home (or wherever).
I ran into this only when I was first setting up OpenVPN on a PC I have at work. I had already set up the VPN server on my Asus router at home, and had installed the OpenVPN client app on two phones. None of that was confusing, and at no time was I faced with two possible choices of what to download and use.
But when setting up that Windows PC to have an OpenVPN client, so that I can view my security cams from work (or access anything else on my home network securely), I ran into the snag to which the OP is referring.
In fact, I downloaded and installed what I thought was the correct OpenVPN program on that PC, only to find that it then needed me to subscribe to their paid VPN service. And, of course, that wouldn't have done me any good, anyhow.
So I had to uninstall that program and then find the OpenVPN client that I actually needed. Once I did that, and set it up with a username and password on my router at home, and then exported the encryption key and installed that on the PC, it works like a champ.
Indeed, it's free. And it lets me securely access my home network from work on that PC, just as the Android OpenVPN client app lets me connect from anywhere on my phone and my wife's.
There are good reasons to use a VPN service, as well. But for accessing your home (or whatever) LAN securely, from anywhere, you need to set up your own VPN server, at your home (or whatever).
So we all need to be aware that when you visit the OpenVPN website, what you're most likely to run into first, is their paid VPN service. I am not at a PC now, but somewhere, I think I have a link that will get you to where you need to be if you want to download the VPN client that you need to access your home VPN server from a windows PC.
I don't remember it being hard to find the phone/tablet app for it. It was either the first, or the only OpenVPN app. But finding the same thing for a PC was confusing to me.
And keep in mind that you only need the OpenVPN client for a PC if you want to access your home LAN remotely on a PC somewhere outside of your home LAN (like me viewing my home cameras from a PC at work).
It's something you would likely want to put on a laptop PC so you can check your cams from anywhere when traveling, for example. You could also use it to securely surf from, for example, a hotel or airport WiFi which would otherwise be highly insecure!
That's one of the advantages of any VPN. But with your own VPN set up at your home, you can view your cameras as well as, surf, stream, or whatever, and it's the same as if you were at home logged into your own WiFi.
It works like a charm, by the way. But I have upload speed of at least 10Mbps, and download speed of 100Mbps at home. I can also stream Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, etc., through the tunnel, too, and at least at 1080P, it appears to be no different than when I do this directly via the ISP at work.
It's a bit silly to do it, but it shows that the feed can download to my house, be encrypted by the router, piped back out through the upload side of my ISP at home, then download that encrypted stream at work, and have it decrypted and then shown on my PC at work. And it's pretty lame PC at work, so it kind of amazes me.
This may not be as impressive as streaming the camera feed from home, actually, but all of this is just amazing to me.
Anyhow, be careful which product you download from OpenVPN if you're looking for the PC client that you need for accessing your home VPN server. It was confusing to me, too!
Last edited:
TL1096r
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They do make the openvpn site a bit confusing for downloading:
Community Downloads | OpenVPN
You need Windows 10 installer (NSIS)
@catcamstar helped me with this one.
Community Downloads | OpenVPN
You need Windows 10 installer (NSIS)
@catcamstar helped me with this one.
catcamstar
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Speedtest is often offered by your internet provider (eg for AT&T: AT&T High Speed Internet Speed Test, a Belgian ISP speedtest is Speedtest van Telenet). When doing these kind of tests, you can try to "saturate" your downstream and upstream channels, and you'll notice what bandwidth your "edge" on the internet can provide (which might be capped by a software threshold, or a hadware "limiter" - eg you are 200m from the last transceiver).
Good luck with measuring!
CC
MakeItRain
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The new Rasperry Pi 4 should be a fast workhorse for OpenVPN usage and rather cheap one at that. Or you could just use a Ubiquiti ERX as well.
TL1096r
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Pi4 is expensive for a VPN now. ERX would probably be better with more features.
botics
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Sonicwall...
looney2ns
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Not really, I just love cryptic answers. He was suggesting a stand alone appliance.
Yes, you can run it on your BlueIris server.
How To Guide: Set Up & Configure OpenVPN client/server VPN | OpenVPN
Thank you looney!
catcamstar
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Yet keep in mind the security impact of running a VPN service endpoint on a device which provides 99% other capabilities than networking alone. Hence I also like the answer of the Sonicwall: this is a 100% networking device, and slim chances are that it will not be infested with virusses/trojan horses/lacking security fixes than the average win10 pc with tons of bloatware, reboot schedules, not to mention that if your vpn gets hammered (and yes, it will be discovered by chinese scanners, and yes, it will be hammered), your most crucial part of your video surveillance systems will suffer - in worst case: give up.
If you are aware of that impact, feel free to run it on your win10 pc with BI, but I personally wouldn't do it.
thank you for the information. It seems like accessing your home network from the outside just brings a whole host of security concerns. Now im wondering if its really worth doing.
1. By hammered do you mean that it will be infiltrated regardless of my set up?
2. Also, will running the VPN server on a dedicated raspberry pi be more secure than my Windows 10 machine?
3. a) It seems like most SonicWall devices are quite expensive, is there a starter/consumer model that is popular in this community?
3. b) are these appliances known to be much more secure than a router with built-in VPN capability (Asus, Edgerouter)?
1. By hammered do you mean that it will be infiltrated regardless of my set up?
2. Also, will running the VPN server on a dedicated raspberry pi be more secure than my Windows 10 machine?
3. a) It seems like most SonicWall devices are quite expensive, is there a starter/consumer model that is popular in this community?
3. b) are these appliances known to be much more secure than a router with built-in VPN capability (Asus, Edgerouter)?