VPN Router - Need some advice.

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sprite-

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Hi All.

I have Sky Fibre with the Sky Hub but i'm looking to put our internet behind a VPN, i'm going to use PIA.

I believe i need to find a router which can run DD-WRT?

I'm trying to keep cost low, i've got no specialist requirements for a router. Just need 802.11ac, dual band, gig ports and at least 4 plus the WAN port.

Any recommendations on what router i should buy and what to flash it wish? I've just assumed DD-WRT and dont know if there is something new i should use.
 
You need to consider that Sky uses MER for authenticating with their network which can cause headaches when choosing a router. The ideal scenario is to have a seperate device to deal with WiFi rather than all-in-one but that is costly. Can you not just use the PIA apps? They are pretty stable in my experience.

Edit: Just re-read your requirements. You won't get 100mb throughput via a VPN using a device that costs £40. Hardware spec will be restrictive.
 
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You don't seem to know what you want, or why and the budget isn't going to work easily. If you can afford an 80/20 connection and to pay the money PIA are asking, you can surely up the budget to something more realistic?

Firstly no consumer router (and nothing in the prosumer/commercial end of things) without hardware acceleration will cope with 80mbit using anything that would count as meaningful encryption, the high end stuff is ARM based but lacks a hardware FPU so has to emulate floating point operations, guess what's used for encryption? Your £40 budget will buy you something horrible from a DDWRT perspective, that will translate to a stupidly slow connection which is pointless when you are paying for 80/20.

Secondly putting all your traffic behind a VPN has potential issues - some sites will have issues, everything will be slower, it's generally not a good idea.

If the issue is making sure your 'Linux ISO' downloads are kept private look to a virtualised environment, you can add Sabz (or something decent) and Deluge/QB/rT or whatever you prefer as well, connection drops, so does all traffic via Privoxy in a docker and connect other devices to it if you need to, this removes the device overhead encryption from the router and onto something that will have a fighting chance at getting near line speed. Other than that look at building a pfsense box, the learning curve is a lot steeper than my docker suggestion, but it can possibly be done in budget or you may already have hardware that is suitable.
 
Avalon said:
You don't seem to know what you want, or why and the budget isn't going to work easily. If you can afford an 80/20 connection and to pay the money PIA are asking, you can surely up the budget to something more realistic?

Firstly no consumer router (and nothing in the prosumer/commercial end of things) without hardware acceleration will cope with 80mbit using anything that would count as meaningful encryption, the high end stuff is ARM based but lacks a hardware FPU so has to emulate floating point operations, guess what's used for encryption? Your £40 budget will buy you something horrible from a DDWRT perspective, that will translate to a stupidly slow connection which is pointless when you are paying for 80/20.

Secondly putting all your traffic behind a VPN has potential issues - some sites will have issues, everything will be slower, it's generally not a good idea.

If the issue is making sure your 'Linux ISO' downloads are kept private look to a virtualised environment, you can add Sabz (or something decent) and Deluge/QB/rT or whatever you prefer as well, connection drops, so does all traffic via Privoxy in a docker and connect other devices to it if you need to, this removes the device overhead encryption from the router and onto something that will have a fighting chance at getting near line speed. Other than that look at building a pfsense box, the learning curve is a lot steeper than my docker suggestion, but it can possibly be done in budget or you may already have hardware that is suitable.
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I've already conceded in a post above that my budget is not realistic for what i want to do. Everything you've taken the time to write is almost entirely redundant, well done you ;).
 
sprite- said:
I've already conceded in a post above that my budget is not realistic for what i want to do. Everything you've taken the time to write is almost entirely redundant, well done you ;).
Click to expand...

Budget isn't the issue, you can likely implement what you want for free, unfortunately you don't seem to want to read or lack the ability to comprehend that your chosen method is stupid/wrong on pretty much every level.

  • 1. Running any significant form of VPN encryption on consumer level router hardware that lacks either an FPU or hardware acceleration on a 80/20 profiled line is bad.
  • 2. PIA are neither good or cheap. They do offer a lot of hand holding for people who are unwilling to read/learn.
  • 3. VM/Docker based options are free, will likely allow you to run near line speed and are a lot more flexible.

You quote my post, then dismiss it because your 'budget isn't realistic' (Hint: Free is less than £40). I'm really trying not to insinuate you're a complete imbecile, but having failed to grasp simple points and failing miserably to grasp that £0 is less than £40 you then try and go with sarcasm. Good luck with that :D
 
Avalon said:
Budget isn't the issue, you can likely implement what you want for free, unfortunately you don't seem to want to read or lack the ability to comprehend that your chosen method is stupid/wrong on pretty much every level.

  • 1. Running any significant form of VPN encryption on consumer level router hardware that lacks either an FPU or hardware acceleration on a 80/20 profiled line is bad.
  • 2. PIA are neither good or cheap. They do offer a lot of hand holding for people who are unwilling to read/learn.
  • 3. VM/Docker based options are free, will likely allow you to run near line speed and are a lot more flexible.

You quote my post, then dismiss it because your 'budget isn't realistic' (Hint: Free is less than £40). I'm really trying not to insinuate you're a complete imbecile, but having failed to grasp simple points and failing miserably to grasp that £0 is less than £40 you then try and go with sarcasm. Good luck with that :D
Click to expand...

Whilst i agree with most of this, i can't agree that "PIA are neither good or cheap". I have been with them for 2 years at 39 euros per year and it has been faultless in conjunction with pfSense.
 
At the last count I have 5-6 different VPN providers for different reasons, PIA are
Steve_bullockuk said:
Whilst i agree with most of this, i can't agree that "PIA are neither good or cheap". I have been with them for 2 years at 39 euros per year and it has been faultless in conjunction with pfSense.
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PIA isn't really 'cheap' relative to other providers in the market place offering very similar levels of service, though obviously you can pay more and get more or pay a lot less and get a nasty VPS based provider, it also doesn't offer anything significant beyond other providers, you can get better value elsewhere. I have 5-6 different VPN provider accounts, I don't pay for 2 or 3 of those, but both of my lifetime subs from other providers cost roughly what a year of PIA would. If I had to sit down today and pick a new provider today, PIA is unlikely to be top of the list.
 
Avalon said:
At the last count I have 5-6 different VPN providers for different reasons, PIA are


PIA isn't really 'cheap' relative to other providers in the market place offering very similar levels of service, though obviously you can pay more and get more or pay a lot less and get a nasty VPS based provider, it also doesn't offer anything significant beyond other providers, you can get better value elsewhere. I have 5-6 different VPN provider accounts, I don't pay for 2 or 3 of those, but both of my lifetime subs from other providers cost roughly what a year of PIA would. If I had to sit down today and pick a new provider today, PIA is unlikely to be top of the list.
Click to expand...

Thats fair enough. I have compared PIA to Nord and PureVPN and neither gave as good results as PIA. Which would you recommend as being the best service?
 
I've deleted a few posts here. Guys, if you really don't want to hear from each other then put the other poster on ignore. You never have to hear from them again.
 
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