AR-750 upgrade from MT-300 v2 no difference (openvpn)

mikester · 2018-01-14T18:30:15.000Z

Hi all, before I get into what I want to post I just want to say I’m no expert with these routers but have configured quite a few using the web gui to configure openvpn for family & friends.

I experienced an open vpn speed increase when upgrading from mt-300 v1 to the v2 which went from roughly 8mb to 12mb download using IPVANISH as a provider. Doing some research I read that the ar-750 was capable of up to 17 mb download due to its increased cpu speed.

I received the ar-750 last night and setup in the same way I configured the mt300 device and when testing I’m maxing out at the same speeds I was getting with the mt300v2 which is around 12mb.

If this router is capable of higher speeds what am I doing wrong that’s restricting the speed? I’ve noticed there are a load of processes that are enabled by default on the router, could they be using up processing power I don’t need as I’m only interested in this router connecting to a vpn to route my traffic through. I’ve tried various servers from different countries and the maximum I’ve hit so far is always 12mb download.

Thanks for your time in advance.

alzhao · 2018-01-15T17:48:40.000Z

I am doing testing with various vpn providers and servers. AR300M an AR750 do achieve better speed but it is not always. The speed is limited by configurations and environment. Still trying to figure out a more better way to benchmark the devices.

mikester · 2018-01-16T04:07:37.000Z

Thanks Alzhao

I’ll be very interested in your findings. As mentioned I’m getting stable speeds of around 12mb which is plenty for now but the additional bandwidth would be useful.

I know the IPVANISH servers are capable of much more so won’t be the bottle neck. In case it helps with your investigations I live in the uk and BT is my provider. I have a 44mb download when bypassing the vpn.

if there is anything you would like me to try to aid in your testing please let me know.

pabzter · 2018-01-18T06:42:45.000Z

Not sure how you figured it would be faster with VPN, CPU is the same. Only improvement is the 5GHz WiFi on that device. Otherwise you aren’t going to see any difference in VPN performance versus the AR300M. I do hope we get something with a little more UMPH at some point in the near future but it’s good enough for my purposes at the moment. If I need more, I have a pfSense VPN box I can roll up.

mikester · 2018-01-18T08:15:31.000Z

The cpu speed is listed as 580 for the MT300 V2 device I upgraded from. The AR750 is listed as 650 cpu speed which is an increase.

i have also read multiple times that the cpu increase should in theory produce VPN speeds of roughly 17 mbps where as the MT300 would max out at 12 which I can confirm does.

Therefore why is the upgraded AR750 also maxing out at 12…

pabzter · 2018-01-20T06:57:55.000Z

I have several of the AR300-M and just got an AR750 recently. 10-12Mbps is where they both top out. I’ve heard anecodtals of slightly higher but not much. You can’t expect much for a device using just a watt or two and that can run off a battery pack. I’m satisfied (enough) with the performance and it’s night and day better than any other similar-vein device I’ve used in the past (many of them, trust me.) 10Mbps is pretty good, certainly enough to get things done. If you require higher OpenVPN thoroughput you are going to need to move to a full-size device and even those generally are NOT very good for OpenVPN either. My ASUS models (full size routers) often can only do 10-15Mbps as well! There aren’t a whole lot of them which are capable of any faster via OpenVPN. It’s pretty hardware intensive and not hardware accelerated like other VPN protocols. I’m sure there will be a newer SoC in time that can provide faster speeds in the same power/thermal envelope as the current CPUs these little devices are using, but we’re just not there yet.

EDIT: Forgot you were coming from MT300 yes these do have faster CPU but we’re only talking 650 versus 580 on the same architecture. It’s not going to be any substantive difference.