ios vpn protocol recommendations? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RevolutionaryRub961 · 2023-11-03 03:01 I am going to host a VPN server on my raspberry pi 4. Originally I decided to go with wireguard as everyone recommended, but I saw in some post wireguard client in iOS is not a good one in terms of performance. So I'm thinking of using natively supported protocols in iOS, which are IKEv2/IPsec/L2TP. My question to iOS users is that, what is your recommendation in terms of performance? Wireguard, or IKEv2/IPsec/L2TP? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zfa · 2023-11-03 03:07 What performance issues are you seeing - battery drain or throughput? I'm not aware of any egregious problems with WG on iOS myself and WG isn't very chatty, only sending data as necessary so the only overheard is the encryption itself which should be negligible(ish) on modern hardware. There is no keepalive in the protocl so no idle connection to keep pinging. As for throughput, again, WG is pretty performant. Most common issue is with having too large an MTU defined for you cellular link. Can't advise on any other the others, not used them for years but I guess maybe one of them might be better for you, you'd have to benchmark given your hardware (both sides) and telco I guess. GL. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RevolutionaryRub961 · 2023-11-03 03:12 I previously used Wireguard for ProtonVPN, not home server. And I thought I'm okay with it like your situation, but as I said I saw some post about complaining Wireguard on iOS. So I wondered if native options are more smooth and flawless compared to Wireguard or not. Thanks for the answer! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- spacebass · 2023-11-03 03:35 Large iOS deployment here. We use OpenVPN almost entirely including for on-demand auto VPN profiles. I can’t wrap my head around wireguard. I like deploying and using IPsec a lot! But strongswan struggles with more than one user auth instance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RevolutionaryRub961 · 2023-11-03 03:42 So you did prefer OpenVPN to Wireguard. I heard that OpenVPN is somewhat heavier than Wireguard, so I wonder what made you choose OpenVPN over Wireguard. Since I'm going to be the only user of the server, I may consider using IPsec with strongswan, too. Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sosa-Leader · 2023-11-03 03:50 I use wireguard. I use it only for my iphone 14. It works great. I initially setup OpenVPN but had nothing but issues and actually terrible speeds. Wireguard is the way to go IMO. I will say, in my OWN experience, wireguard seems a bit more laggy when using it with my laptop, so I don't use it unless I need to access my network for some reason away from home. This could just be because my pi3 can't handle 2 connections at once for wireguard, idunno. Never tried OpenVPN on my laptop. This isn't by any means advice, just some personal experience. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zfa · 2023-11-03 04:15 You've still not verbalised what the complaints you've heard of actually are so it's hard to help tbh. If we knew what you think is wrong with WireGuard then maybe someone could say which others tech addresses those issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RevolutionaryRub961 · 2023-11-03 04:27 As I said before, I had no specific issues with Wireguard. Someone said that Wireguard in iOS is not smooth as it is in other platforms, and because I have not experienced those iOS native protocols before, I couldn't know how Wireguard does well compared to those. So I just wanted to know your opinions. It seems people using iOS does well with Wireguard, so I think that's okay. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- spacebass · 2023-11-03 04:37 The YouTube crowd loves WG. I love OpenVPN because it works on everything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sk1nT7 · 2023-11-03 23:31 So you have the option between Wireguard, OpenVPN and native IKE/IPSec. Regarding speed I would choose Wireguard. Regarding reliability and somewhat oldschool vibes I would use OpenVPN. However, both require a 3rd party VPN client to be installed. Wg-easy is a pretty cool project for a dockerized Wireguard server + web mgmt interface. Also firezone looks cool. Finally we have IKE/IPSec. Supported natively by many platforms such as Windows and most mobile operating systems. Can be even dockerized. https://blog.lrvt.de/dockerized-ikev2-vpn/