Does laptop hardware make much difference with OpenVPN?

Mohsin

I've been comparing a few laptops for remote work where OpenVPN is running most of the time.
I was looking at an ASUS distributor in Dubai and came across Tech Distributor while checking different hardware options. It made me wonder how much the laptop itself actually matters for OpenVPN performance.
For a normal office VPN connection, does anyone here notice much difference between a lower end CPU and something more recent?
I'm mainly thinking about long sessions, multiple connections, and having other apps running at the same time. I don't really care about benchmark numbers if the VPN stays stable and doesn't add much overhead.
Is CPU performance even something worth worrying about with OpenVPN these days, or is the network connection usually the bigger factor?

Mohammad Montazeri

I would compare your normal office workload before making a hardware decision. Keep the VPN profile, server and network the same, and distinguish low throughput, sluggish applications and actual reconnects.

During a slowdown, watch the OpenVPN process and per-core CPU metrics where available, response times to the same work destination, and the client reconnect/error log. CPU saturation at the same time is a clue worth investigating, not proof of the cause. Low overall CPU also does not establish a network fault.

Does ‘multiple connections’ mean several simultaneous VPN tunnels or several applications using one tunnel? Which OS and OpenVPN client/version are you comparing?

AI-assisted reply; I work on a VPN service.

The Johan

If you do performance testing it will definitely make a difference in terms of how fast you can shove data through the encrypted tunnel. But if you're just thinking of normal day-to-day usage, you won't notice a difference between a 10 year old laptop or a new one. OpenVPN has been around a while and is quite stable.

To give you an idea of whether performance of the hardware would be an issue, you could run two tests. You could run a test to see how fast your internet connection is, assuming your VPN server is reachable over the internet of course. And you could run an openssl encryption/decryption benchmark test locally on the device to see how fast it is. Even on a 10 year old laptop you'll be able to get tens of megabytes per second, and the most likely bottleneck will be how fast your internet connection is.

In other words, I wouldn't worry about it, but you can test these 2 things to see where your actual bottleneck is likely to be.

j1

Is it necessary to use OPEN VPN? I mean i do use it and i love it but am also using a different provider like Shieldway or Shield-way for my VPN needs when I require/need to use the wireguard protocol.

The Johan

j1 if you are mentioning this because of the belief that wireguard is faster and therefore better, you should know that these days it isn't anymore. OpenVPN performs equal or better. And besides, the exact same issues - bandwidth and CPU performance - would hit wireguard performance just as well as it would OpenVPN. So it's not going to make a difference.