I think this is a needed feature in Orbi line up is the ability to do VPN CLIENT. Given that Rep have sold us out to ISP. A VPN client on router is prefer. Orbi already have a VPN server why not put a client in as well.
Model: Orbi High-Performance AC3000 Tri-Band WiFi System (RBK50)
Netgear has a dedicated community forum called Idea Exchange where you can submit ideas or features you want to see, Netgear Engineering looks at it an more thumbs up and people advocate and state their use case more likely it may make it to some future firmware release at some point. example below is link for The Ethernet Backhaul Request:
I think this is a needed feature in Orbi line up is the ability to do VPN CLIENT. Given that Rep have sold us out to ISP. A VPN client on router is prefer. Orbi already have a VPN server why not put a client in as well.
vpn client is usually not needed as single user devices can run their own vpn clients , the issue is if you have a vpn client on the router all the traffic flows through the vpn and then you would want the ability to choose which do and which dont
if you want that type of configuration put the orbi in ap mode and run it behind an asus rt series router with merlin firmware on it
I think this is a needed feature in Orbi line up is the ability to do VPN CLIENT. Given that Rep have sold us out to ISP. A VPN client on router is prefer. Orbi already have a VPN server why not put a client in as well.
This is a great idea.
Some users may not want a blanket VPN connection for all devices in the network, but given the current political climate, it'll be nice to have this feature.
While it would be nice for Netgear to support a VPN client, it may not be a panacea. Most consumer grade routers are not up to the task of processing large amounts of VPN traffic. Encrypting traffic is computationally intensive and can cause a significant drop in speeds. Modern PCs, OTOH, can handle encryption with little impact. Just something to keep in mind as we try to cope with loss of privacy.
This is a GREAT idea - I was just coming here to suggest it myself.
The BIG advantage that putting it in the router is that one connection/login covers the entire household. I have not only PCs (Win and Linux) but also a couple Amazon Alexa's and about a dozen smart home devices. I would really like to see these behind a VPN connection, not just for the information privacy but also the invasion aspect.
C'mon Netgear engineers! If there's a high end router that deserves to have VPN capabilities its the Orbi product.
Model: Orbi High-Performance AC3000 Tri-Band WiFi System (RBK50)
The one truth about -all- single-board SoCs (found in every piece of consumer network gear in the past 15 years at least) is that they are partiularly poorly-suited for VPN. The absolute best throughput you can expect from them is around 10mbps, at which point they will be processing-saturated and very likely also impact other services on the router. With average Internet pipe speeds on the rise, as soon as you offer VPN service, you start getting the following complaints from users:
- It's too slow
- When I'm using VPN heavily, my family complains that Netflix sucks
- Why can't I connect my VPN to random fly-by-night VPN provider X?
It's a support nightmare and a bad idea in general. VPN belongs on the client (for general use cases) or on a dedicated VPN applicance (for whole-house VPN).
I'm not sure I follow the part about SoC's having slow thruput, so not a good choice for VPN. If all the traffic is already going thru the router, what's the diff it it also goes thru a VPN pipe? Alexa may generate some small amount of traffic, but my smart switch traffic has be be tiny! A couple times a day they get sent and "on" or "off" message, that can't even make a blip on the traffic meter.
I can understand the support problems, which are only going to get worse, when everybody starts jumping on the VPN bandwagon, but I think it would be fair for Netgear to have a certification process for the VPN providers. Chose one of the approved providers and the customer is all set. This way the router set up could include the VPN vender's configuration data.
The part of your answer that really intreged me tho was the mention of a "VPN appliance" - what's that?
The poor throughput and performance from SoCs has nothing to do with bandwidth and everything to do with real-time encryption/decryption...these SoCs are not hardware-assist in that department and thus bog down quickly. Power-wise, they are more or less on par with a Raspberry Pi in terms of compute peformance - overkill for routing, woefully underpowered for VPN.
re: a VPN appliance, I was talking about a dedicated VPN concentrator (a la Cisco), though I know a few companies did have some efforts last year to bring "VPN gateways for the masses" to market (and I haven't heard from any of them since, so I'm guessing they found it out it's a bit harder than it may appear on the surface). Even Ubiquiti's ASIC-based solutions don't hardware-offload any VPN other than IPSec.
For my purposes, I've put an Asus VivoPC with a multicore Celeron up to the task as a mini-server running Linux and SoftEther (which offers native SSL VPN, OpenVPN, SSTP, etc., etc., etc. protocolling in one stack), but even it bogs down a bit under heavy VPN workloads. The core i7 model would have been a far better choice (and have allowed for beyond-gigabit VPN tunnels), but who wants to spend over $700 for a decent VPN solution?
Wait, when you're talking about SoC's are you referring to smart home devices? If so, I'm still not getting the problem they'd present to an Orbi based VPN. I don't think they present anything of a realistic load, a couple packets now and then. And I can't imagine them having any real time demands for data - they get a packet with a "Turn off the light" command, they send an "Okay" back.
As far as Raspberry Pi's - I have two of them running Kodi and they run OpenVPN just fine (for their own data streams).
As far as the VPN appliance - I think you're expecting a LOT more Internet traffic than I am -and- a lot better base speed by the ISP (out here if very rural TN I feel lucky to have 3Mb).
I still think there is, or will be, a demand for a whole-house VPN connection. Orbi is the logical spot to provide that. It already provides a VPN server, so a lot of the code for encryption is already there. Somebody is going to see it and fill that consumer need. There's already a Open Media Vault for a home network storage, there Kodi providing an open media player. Somebody is going to slap together a whole home VPN. I'd like to think that Netgear has the expertice, they have a top end product that already supports the protocol....
Wait, when you're talking about SoC's are you referring to smart home devices? If so, I'm still not getting the problem they'd present to an Orbi based VPN. I don't think they present anything of a realistic load, a couple packets now and then. And I can't imagine them having any real time demands for data - they get a packet with a "Turn off the light" command, they send an "Okay" back.
As far as Raspberry Pi's - I have two of them running Kodi and they run OpenVPN just fine (for their own data streams).
As far as the VPN appliance - I think you're expecting a LOT more Internet traffic than I am -and- a lot better base speed by the ISP (out here if very rural TN I feel lucky to have 3Mb).
I still think there is, or will be, a demand for a whole-house VPN connection. Orbi is the logical spot to provide that. It already provides a VPN server, so a lot of the code for encryption is already there. Somebody is going to see it and fill that consumer need. There's already a Open Media Vault for a home network storage, there Kodi providing an open media player. Somebody is going to slap together a whole home VPN. I'd like to think that Netgear has the expertice, they have a top end product that already supports the protocol....
I agree with this.
There have been a lot of chatter in my office due to the recent political climate and one key topic that kept on discussed is:
"How to have my WHOLE home Internet connected to the VPN instead of per device?".
This even came from people who are not so technical (non-Engineer).
By SoC, I'm talking about the processor inside the Orbi - powerful enough for routing, very weak for broadband encryption.
I don't doubt at all the need and market for whole-house VPN - I just don't think there is a product in-market powerful -and- affordable enough right now for general consumers. I feel for you with your ISP connection, but I can tell you that FiOS customers pushing 300+Mbit and Google Fiber at 1Gbit are going to feel VERY constrained by any sort of VPN connection (client or server) that the Orbi's hardware is capable of delivering.
The BETTER feature for router based VPN would be to allow SELECTIVE use of the VPN by those devices/clients that want VPN while allowing those that do not to bypass the VPN as they feel they do not want/need it. This gateway/VPN Split Tunnel would be a GREAT feature that I feel certain many users would like to have available. If Netgear would/could enable usage of router based OPENVPN services like HMA, ExpressVPN or others it would be a great selling point....
With all due respect installing a VPN router like WRDT Asus for Orbi to connect to just adds network delay and complexity. I bought Orbi to build a wireless mesh for my condo in Mexico to solve weak coverage. I like the ease of setup and it has greatly improved performance.
I understand support may receive more support calls but come on you have a good product why not make it a great one by adding a VPN client.
You bring up some good points. The days of the old 2500 routers with little memory and weak processor are gone. Today's consumer routers have improved drastically my issue is with DSL services as the bottleneck today where I live.
I just ordered the orbi 2 days ago, thinking it must have a VPN client option at that price range.... Should of done a little more re search.
Anyways I made an account just to let the Netgear devs know that this is a much wanted feature. I really hope someday they release a firmware the enables VPN clients directly through the router. I heard really great things about the Orbi, but not having a VPN client feature is just a let down.
I just received my SRR60/SRS60 combo. I chose it because it claimed to do VPN. Obviously I didn't do enough research because OpenVPN rejects the certificates as being too weak. I thought there must be a workaround by now, but alas I can't find anything. Can anyone point me to the fix, otherwise this is going back to Amazon along with an appropriate review.
P.S. Why cannot I not put SRS60 into the Model field on this form?
Model: Orbi High-Performance AC3000 Tri-Band WiFi System (RBK50)
As with other posters, I was fooled by the claim that Orbi offered full VPN support. It does not, and to blame this on a weak processor at this price point is annoying. While I can install a client on some of my devices, I am limited to 6 clients, which is insufficient for my needs, and will in any case leave some devices exposed as they cannot support VPN clients. I am disappointed that Netgear falls short.
