I have a 300 Mbps ISP connection and use a Synology RT6600AX router that supports VPN using openvpn files. I go log into Proton VPN site, do a router configuration, use UDP select a country and server, download the openvpn file. I have found Peru to be usually a decent connection, but US connections are horrible.
I then log into my RT6600AX router, Name the VPN, upload the openvpn file and copy and paste Username and PW…I am able to connect to any Proton VPN server I build out. However, my ISP speeds drop from ~300 Mbps down to between ~30 and 50 Mbps, I understand I lose some bandwidth with the VPN connection, but I shouldn’t lose 3/4 of the bandwidth. The RT6600AX shows less than 60 to 70% CPU load and approximately 20% RAM usage, so there is processing capacity left in the router.
Additionally, the speeds are so slow, most of my internet surfing and TV streaming is impacted to the point it is useless.
Is there anything I can do to obtain better VPN speed connections? Are there any US servers to select that are good? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
How does your VPN perform when using the app on your computer? If you get lower speed for US servers in general, Im afraid there wont be much to do, also how fast is your internet without VPN.
Did you figure this out?
I have a TPLink Deco XE75 and my speed drops from 400+ to like 20.
Proton’s advertising and features say you can use your full bandwidth, but that’s not true. I can get about 15 Mbps myself per VPN connection. Even as I write this post speedtest.net, connected via Proton, gives me 7Mbps. Without VPN I can achieve 250 Mbps.
You may want to think about use case. 10 Mbps is often plenty enough for streaming media, so if you are getting a minimum 30 Mbps, that’s pretty good. We’d love our full bandwidth with the benefits of bypassing geo restrictions on content, but that may not quite work. Edit: If your streams are low quality or buffering, it might be the service is responsible for the poor connection. YouTube has a stats for nerds panel when you right click a video and I think it shows your current connection speed. Other services may not show it. But if YouTube can tell you you get 30 Mbps+ without buffering a 4K video, then it may be the other services.
If your situation is wanting to use your full bandwidth across multiple devices, then using a client on each device would probably be sufficient.
I have the Synology RT6600AX as well. I have a 400 Mbps ISP connection. I also use Proton services and recently I have been looking into the VPN service. I tried the Open VPN configuration on the router. I get 1/4 of the speed (50 upload and 100 download). For testing purposes, I am using a server in the same city as my ISP. On the router, CPU load was maximum 51% and memory 49%.
When I use the VPN client on my computer only, I get similar speeds with or without a VPN 50 upload / 420 to 450 download. I also tried Wireguard and Open VPN UDP with similar results.
It does have something to do with the router… Maybe Wireguard would be more efficient ? To bad the RT6600AX does not support that.
I also noticed that Proton VPN allows to configure some options when using Open VPN. However the way they do it is to add a special suffix to the username. Unfortunately, the RT6600AX router does not seem to support the “+” character.
Options are:
# Please use “username+b:6” in order to enforce exiting through same server.
# If you are a paying user you can also enable the ProtonVPN ad blocker (NetShield) or Moderate NAT:
# Use: “username+b:6+f1” to enable anti-malware filtering
# Use: “username+b:6+f2” to additionally enable ad-blocking filtering
# Use: “username+b:6+nr” to enable Moderate NAT
# Note that you can combine the “+nr” suffix with other suffixes.
Update:
I opened a support ticket with Synology. This is known issue. They have a workaround if these options are required.
-
Create the OpenVPN client using the standard username without the invalid characters “+”.
-
SSH login to ERM with root permissions (watchout for firewall system rules).
https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/How_to_login_to_DSM_with_root_permission_via_SSH_Telnet
- Use the following command to edit the profile of the OpenVPN client
:
vi /usr/syno/etc/synovpnclient/openvpn/ovpnclient.conf
- In that configuration file, you should see a line “user=xxx”, then add the options containing the invalid characters “+” and save the file.
To compare with previous results:
I just purchased a travel router (GLinet Beryl AX GL-MT3000). Here are the results using the OpenVPN client and Wireguard client with my ISP 400 down / 50 up and Proton VPN in same city.
Beryl AX router OpenVPN Client: 170 down / 54 up.
Beryl AX router Wireguard Client: 232 down / 52 up. (ping is much better using Wireguard).
They are about the same using the client on my Mac.
Without VPN I get 300 Mbps.
No, Synology said it’s not their hardware and Proton says their speeds aren’t that slow. LOL!! However, I used Ookla Speedtest while using Proton VPN on my MacBook Pro and the speed without VPN was over 300 Mbps, when I enable VPN speeds dropped to 30 to 40 Mbps…So I think it’s Proton VPN
I guess what I would do is try to play around with different protocols, servers, If that doesnt work maybe try a different VPN that promises high speeds, could be just that ProtonVPN isnt all that fast based on your location and needs.
Weird…I have the opposite experience. My speed test on phone and PC only slow slightly with VPN on the device. But the router slows way down when VPN on. I’ve read elsewhere that its a high and specialized workload for the CPU and most consumer routers are not designed for it. I have a old MikroTik Hex S router that is supposed to work good with VPN, so I’m going to try that. Just have to find it in the closet.