Rolling your own VPN server. How much compute power do I need?

Site Feedback
1

I want to roll my own VPN server but I am not sure how much compute power I will need.

I was looking at buyVM which offers a one core , 128mb ram and 500GB BW/Month for $15 a year.

Now I am pretty sure that encryption doesn’t need much memory and the only limiting factor here is compute power.

I also know that it probably depends on the download speed. → The faster I download the more it will need to encrypt. I am not too concerned about my download speed which is really slow (1200Mbit/s) but I may want to share it with some friends.

How much compute power do I need? What is your VPS setup? How much compute power do you have?

2

Nearly none. Seriously.

Though if you really have “just” a 1,2Gbit connection at home (hint: you do not) maybe yes you do need some more power.

3

Yeah, OpenVPN uses next to nothing in terms of CPU, ram and disk.

TONS of people use those dirt cheap BuyVM servers for VPNs etc, so you’ll be fine with that.

4

you’re fine with 128MB RAM. You need CPU power for OpenVPN if your b/w is very fast and you use 256-bit ciphers. BF-128 without LZO encryption is the fastest and less CPU consuming for me, keeping the CPU on a decent VPS between 1% and 20% for regular browsing and around 60% when downloading (speed: 4-10MB/sec).

5

1.2Gb/s is not what I would consider ‘really slow’, that’s in the top few individual connections in the world

You’ll need a hefty VPS to handle encryption for 1.2Gb/s download speeds

6

I use a BlueVM VPS, 128mb RAM/128mb vSWAP, single core 1.0GHz, running Ubuntu 12.10, for $7.50 a year. I use the OpenVPN client on my Tomato router so all devices are on the VPN. The VPS is practically idling even while torrenting, and the OpenVPN compression actually increased my upload average by about 1Mbit/s.

7

I know I’m a little late to respond here, but I can assure you that BuyVM’s $15/yr packages are more than adequate to run your VPN servers on… I have a few in production on those same plans… :slight_smile:

8

next to nothing in terms of CPU when doing what? browsing yes, but downloading (if you’re using a fast broadband) it will eat CPU for breakfast.

9

Assuming the OP doesn’t have a connection capable of over a gigabit/sec, I don’t think they’ll have to worry too much about CPU usage.

Testing right now with a multi-threaded download, and at 50Mbit down, I’m sat at a load of 0.08, and this isn’t a powerful VPS I’m using. It costs ~$1.50/month.