[nocman]

"With traditional solutions (such as OpenVPN / IPSec) starting to run out of steam" -- and then zero explanation or evidence of how that is true.

I can see an argument for IPSec. I haven't used that for many years. However, I see zero evidence that OpenVPN is "running out of steam" in any way shape or form.

I would be interested to know the reasoning behind this. Hopefully the sentiment isn't "this is over five years old so something newer must automatically be better". Pardon me if I am being too cynical, but I've just seen way too much of that recently.

[vlovich123]

Seems like you just haven’t been paying attention. Even commercial VPNs like PIA and others now use Wireguard instead of traditional VPN stacks. Tailscale and other companies in that space are starting to replace VPN stacks with Wireguard solutions.

The reasons are abundant, the main ones being performance is drastically better, security is easier to guarantee because the stack itself is smaller and simpler, and it’s significantly more configurable and easier to obtain the behavior you want.

[_joel]

I use and advocate for wireguard but I don't see it's adoption in bigger orgs, at least the ones I've worked in. Appreciate this situation will change over time, but it'll be a long tail.

[mort96]

OpenVPN makes SNAT relatively trivial, from what I can tell. So I can VPN into a network, use a node on the network as my exit node, and access other devices on that network, with source-based NAT set up on the exit node to make it appear as if my traffic is coming from the exit node.

Wireguard seems to make this much more difficult from what I can tell, though I don't know enough about networking to know if that's fundamental to wireguard or just a result on less mature tooling.

[IlikeKitties]

Wireguard is slowly eating the space alive and thats a good thing.

Here's a very educational comparison between Wireguard, OpenVPN and IPSec. It shows how easy wireguard is to manage compared to the other solutions and measures and explains the noticeable differences in speed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmaPT7_T87g

Very recommended!

[wmf]

I wouldn't say they're running out of steam (they never had any) but OpenVPN was always poorly designed and engineered and IPSec has poor interop because there are so many options.

[jbverschoor]

Unfortunately (luckily?) I don’t have enough knees about IPsec, but usually things make a lot more sense once you actually know the exact architecture and rationale behind it

[IntoEquanimity]

Interestingly tried out just now on one of my devices and Wireguard VPN speed was 5x faster on same configuration to OpenVPN.

[tw04]

IPSec isn’t running out of steam anytime soon. Every commercial firewall vendor uses it, and it’s mandatory in any federal government installation.

WireGuard isn’t certified for any federal installation that I’m aware of and I haven’t heard of any vendors willing to take on the work of getting it certified when its “superiority” is of limited relevance in an enterprise situation.

[smcleod]

OpenVPN has both terrible configuration and performance compared to just about anything else. I've seen it really drop off to next to no usage both in companies and for personal use over the past few years as wireguard based solutions have replaced it.

[shadowpho]

Same here. With openvpn my somewhat modern cpu takes out a whole core @100% at like 200 megabits/s.

With WireGuard I instead max out the internet bandwidth (400 megabits/s) with like 20% cpu usage if that.

I really don’t understand why. We have AES acceleration. AES-NI can easily do more bps… why is openvpn so slow?