Slow internet connection on router VPN

VPN
1

Hi y’all,
I am struggling with internet speed after installing NordVPN on my router at home. I am an expat living in the MENA and prefer to connect to North American servers (US or Canada). I have an Asus RT Ax5400 router, and a 200mb/s fibre connection speed, on which I installed the UDP protocol for Canadian and US servers. With the router VPN I cap at 40-50mb/s download speed, 2-8 mb/s upload speed. With the app I reach 130mb/s download speed. Without VPNs I sometimes have 200+ mb/s download speed.

Seeing what others mentioned in some threads, I checked my router CPU load and it never goes beyond 30% usage, and 50 % usage for the RAM. The issue is therefore not a CPU overload. Granted that I am trying to connect halfway across the world, I am wondering whether I could do something better here to improve my internet speed with the router VPN…

Any advice or suggestions that do not involve installing wireguard with Linux? This would be my last choice solution so I’d rather make sure Intried everything first.

Thanks!

EDIT/SOLUTION:

Alright folks so I tried all suggestions below and nothing changed. Whether connecting to a close by country or connecting all the way to North America, OpenVPN capped at the speeds mentioned in my original text. I ended up installing wireguard by pulling out the info using a Linux virtual machine, and it works wonders with a VERY substantial improvement: max speed is now 176 MBs for download and 56 MBs for upload. I have to confess it was a little tricky because no post clearly mentions where each info required by your router, and I also mistook the IP address for the endpoint address because the general command gave me an “IP:” something which was actually the endpoint address. After much frustration I realized I had to use a different specific command for the ip address to show up. At any rate, posting this for posteriority and if anyone needs a tutorial someday post in the comments below and I’ll write one here. Cheers and thank you to all those who tried to help!

2

Try changing the encryption settings. Between NordLynx, OpenVPN (TCP) and (UDP). OpenVPN (UDP) should be the slowest as it so heavily relies on ping times. Which from MENA to NA should be high. Nord should be the fastest but depending on your hardware often isn’t. So your two best bets are OpenVPN(TCP) and NordLynx.

Can you also change the servers that you’re connected to? As one server may be overloaded and an other server maybe faster.

3

Interesting. I’d have thought UDP would be faster than TCP because of less overhead in the transport protocol (even with the keep alives).

4

Thanks for these suggestions imma try them and report back

5

Thanks for the comment. Tbh it’s just that I mistook the IP and endpoint addresses at first, and then the specific command for calling the public key gave me a different public key than the general command for calling a number of relevant items the router configuration does need for the Wg config.

All in all it would have been easier if someone had made a tutorial for asus for instance, circling exactly what command returns what item and where to put each item. It’s aight tho one can’t be spoon fed everything in life :sweat_smile:

Edit: just realized you’re the guy whose commands I mainly used. Thanks again for posting it, it’s just that some stuff brought confusion here and there as I mentioned above but nothing one cannot figure out with some persistence. Cheers!