Running a VPN server on a NAS, getting ~3-4MBps transfers...

[Delgado]

I've been tasked with setting up my work's small QNAP NAS device as a VPN server so that we can work on large image files remotely and securely.

 

After messing around with it over the weekend I was able to get QNAP's QVPN app working via OpenVPN and can connect to it from my Windows 10 machine at home. Unfortunately I'm getting abysmal download speeds of ~3-4 MegaBytes per second, and marginally better upload speeds of 8-12 MegaBytes per second in Windows after mapping a network drive to the NAS. The NAS's Celeron cpu never really gets above 20% utilization while testing.

Both my home connection and the work connection are Gigabit down and 100 Megabit up.

 

Any idea what I might've done wrong? Should I switch to L2TP/Ipsec or Wireguard instead of OpenVPN?

 

Thx
Dave

[LIGISTX]

12 minutes ago, Delgado said:

I've been tasked with setting up my work's small QNAP NAS device as a VPN server so that we can work on large image files remotely and securely.

 

After messing around with it over the weekend I was able to get QNAP's QVPN app working via OpenVPN and can connect to it from my Windows 10 machine at home. Unfortunately I'm getting abysmal download speeds of ~3-4 MegaBytes per second, and marginally better upload speeds of 8-12 MegaBytes per second in Windows after mapping a network drive to the NAS. The NAS's Celeron cpu never really gets above 20% utilization while testing.

Both my home connection and the work connection are Gigabit down and 100 Megabit up.

 

Any idea what I might've done wrong? Should I switch to L2TP/Ipsec or Wireguard instead of OpenVPN?

 

Thx
Dave

Wireguard will be faster, but it wouldn't turn 3-4 mbps into 100... If the celeron doesn't have hardware level encryption, that could be the issue - I am not very familiar with QNAP stuff unfortunately.

 

May be worth trying wireguard, its incredibly easy to set up.

[Eigenvektor]

30 minutes ago, Delgado said:

The NAS's Celeron cpu never really gets above 20% utilization while testing

This is a multi-core CPU, right? Try looking at individual cores, rather than overall usage. I assume this is a single threaded load. If a single core is at 100%, you're still at the CPU's limit, even if overall usage seems low, because only one core is being used.

 

~edit: If your upload is 100 Mbit and you get 12 MB/s going from you to the server, you are at full capacity. 100 Mbps is 12.5 MBps. Only the server's upload speed (your down) seems a bit slow at 3-4 MB/s. Encryption probably takes a bit more work than decryption, so this could explain it.

[LIGISTX]

31 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

~edit: If your upload is 100 Mbit and you get 12 MB/s going from you to the server, you are at full capacity. 100 Mbps is 12.5 MBps. Only the server's upload speed (your down) seems a bit slow at 3-4 MB/s. Encryption probably takes a bit more work than decryption, so this could explain it.

This… I was reading all numbers in mbps, but if OP is saying he has 100mpbs upload BUT is getting 8-12 MBps, he is at full line speed more or less. I was reading it as 100mbps and 8-12mbps (which would be ~1MBps) but I could have interpreted this wrong. 
 

We would need clarification OP.

[Delgado]

39 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

This… I was reading all numbers in mbps, but if OP is saying he has 100mpbs upload BUT is getting 8-12 MBps, he is at full line speed more or less. I was reading it as 100mbps and 8-12mbps (which would be ~1MBps) but I could have interpreted this wrong. 
 

We would need clarification OP.

You're totally right - the upstream is the bottleneck in both directions so 100 megabit is the cap, and that works out to 12.5 MegaBytes minus overhead (which I've read is up to 20% for OpenVPN)

Checking the CPU usage, there isn't one core getting hammered, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some hardware accelerated encryption getting maxed out somewhere.

I'll pitch having the office switch to symmetrical gigabit internet. Thanks!