Router for DD-WRT and OpenVPN

Narj · 28 Oct 2013 at 13:31

Hi All,

At the moment I'm using a CentOS VM on my PC as an OpenVPN Client so the rest of the LAN (ie: TV, Blu Ray player) can use the VPN, but I'm wondering if anyone can recommend a router that will run DD-WRT and OpenVPN with ease? Having my PC on whenever I want to use the VPN from the TV is a bit of a pain (although it works extremely well!)

A lot of kit out there seems to not have enough memory/nvram to run the DD-WRT VPN image.

Narj · 28 Oct 2013 at 15:13

Actually, I think I'm going to give this a go with my Raspberry Pi... didn't think of that!

Narj · 29 Oct 2013 at 08:01

Thanks for that. A small atom box was something I hadn't considered. I was thinking of building some sort of HTPC actually so maybe this is enough extra justification to sort one out.

I will see how the pi performs... I noticed that 1080p content with 5.1 on Netflix uses around 3.5mbps so hopefully i can get away with 2 concurrent streams on that. I'm on 40Mbit/s Infinity.

For the record, my CentOS VM has 100% usage rights on a single core of my CPU ([email protected]). Because I can't put a VPN client on my TV and Blu Ray player, I use the Centos VM to source NAT my Lan to the tunnel interface to save messing around with routing at the far end (multiple clients with the same LAN ranges mean I don't want to do this) - I reckon NAT on top of VPN might be a bit much to ask from the Pi.... we'll see.

Narj · 29 Oct 2013 at 13:17

Just another thought... can these ASUS DD-WRT routers do policy based routing? So... if I had OpenVPN client running on one of the higher end routers, I could route traffic from the TV/Blu Ray player over the tunnel interface?

EDIT: Google suggests you can.... what's the Asus RT-N66U or RT-AC56U like?

Narj · 4 Nov 2013 at 22:39

Well, just a word of warning to others - I got the RT-AC56U and while it's a router with a wealth of features, the 2.4GHz wireless was truly awful. I was getting a lot of dropouts and slowdowns - it took me a while to realise the router was the reason I was tearing my hair out trying to optimise my VPN with inconsistent results! My BT Home Hub is more stable.

I tried updating firmware, and also loading the latest Merlin build. Also tried locking to 20 and 40MHz, disabled b/g option, tried every channel and still had headaches with it. I've RMA'd it now. I'd like to think it was a one-off, but googling suggests that others are having the same issues as well.

5GHz wireless is amazing and rock solid, but I only have one device that supports it!

Narj · 4 Nov 2013 at 23:04

Subliminal Aura said:
Do this.... Just don't get one of the lower single core IONS.

Check the specs of my Nvidia ION htpc in sig. You shouldn't really go below that. It's a dual core celeron but is happy running a ton of services and xbmc

Out of interest, do these things run MAME well?