Best Router for IPVanish VPN

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Hi everyone- I am looking for the best router in the £50-100 price bracket in order to use VPN.

I have narrowed it down to Asus AC-56U AC1200 (£100) or the TP-LINK Archer D5 AC1200 (currently ~ £60).

This will be used with IPVanish (i have read 1 or 2 posts about the Asus potentially being incompatible- is that true?). Also, I would need to be able to select on the router which device uses the VPN and which doesn't- I believe both have this feature?
 
Soldato
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This smells like a crude marketing attempt. If not I apologise.

Why not follow the guidelines provided by the VPN provider? If the necessary information isn't available find a VPN provider who can support their product.
 
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Not sure why you've listed the Archer D5 as that's a modem/router IIRC. Not apples to apples with the Asus and the Belkin.

They're all decent products though, have a look at their reviews on smallnetbuilder to make your mind up.
 
Soldato
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You never mentioned why you'd selected the Asus as an option, or where you'd read about potential issues (and what they might be). And if there are issues why it's still your preferred option.

By run in parallel do you mean that you're intending on putting the Virgin hub into modem mode?

If you're quoting Asus part numbers it helps if you don't shorten them. There are important differences between a RT-AC56U and a DSL-AC56U, which one are you referring to?
 
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Most Asus routers will be able to work for you especially if they have the Merlin WRT software.

How ever the biggest problem is that it will take a HUGE hit on the speed. I tested this a while back on the Asus RT-n66u router and yes it worked but the poor CPU in the router didn't have enough power to handle the encryption/decryption.

I've yet to try it with my newer Asus RT-ac87u router but again don't think the CPU is good enough to handle it and not aware of any router that is. You might have to go down the route of something like pfsense to get enough CPU power.
 
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hmm- interesting point on the CPU power- might need to consider something better than if your setup struggled on processing capacity (the asus router I was talking about is the RT-AC56U).

Btw, I had a bit of a brainwave- is there any way of creating a "2nd" wifi network via my PC, rather than going down a separate router.

i.e. My main PC which has VPN software connects to a Virgin Media hub. At the same time, my PC "shares" itsinternet connection via a 2nd wifi network, to which I could for example connect via my Amazon firestick. That way, the firestick is connecting to the internet via the VPN encryption without having to get a separate router. Does that make sense/is it doable?
 
Soldato
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The processing power required will depend on the available bandwidth. If you've got a 300Mbit connection it's obviously going to need more processing power than a 50Mbit connection.

Does all of your traffic need to go via the VPN? That'll really depend on why you want to use a VPN in the first place.

It may be possible to share the connection via the PC but I'd avoid it if possible.
 
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I just need the Amazon firestick to connect via VPN (which cant be done direct- hence trying to think of workarounds). Its a 70Mbit connection so shouldnt be too taxing hopefully
 
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There seem to be an OpenVPN apk that you can install on Amazon Firestick which might work for you.

https://vpntips.com/fire-tv-vpn-install/

Might actually try this myself on my stick just not sure if my VPN provider provides openvpn config files/info.

Seems you would need to root your device to do this which I'm not doing on mine so would need to VPN through the router then I guess.
 
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Soldato
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VPN at a router level is potentially all kinds of wrong in this situation, it increases latency, reduces speed (no consumer router can handle wire speed using the encryption standards commonly employed by VPN providers unless you opt for something much less secure). If you need VPN for a single device i'd suggest you look to a router functioning as an AP that will route specific traffic over the VPN eg a VPN SSID though i'm not a huge fan of wifi for streaming devices.

My personal suggestion is the FireStick is bottom of the barrel at the best of times, it's under powered and adding local VPN encryption to it won't heklp matters. Personally i'd have suggested Openelec on something suitable and make use of the native VPN support*. It's a well proven and widely used solution, other than that go with a smart DNS provider at a router level, this will give you the same results that you need but without the benefit of privacy/encryption.

*it may not now be native as was under discussion for 'ongoing' integration to the build but the developers faced a user backlash as for obvious reasons it's quite important to many users.
 
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Just to close it out, I went with just sharing the Wifi connection on my PC (via a 'new' wifi network). I bought a long range 2.4/5ghz USB aerial and get really strong signal now throughout the house, and with the Firestick devices I just connect to the Wifi network created by my PC.

Seems to stream stuff very well so far. Thanks for all your help guys!
 
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