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I swear I bought several vpn routers (mostly from linksys) and they have all cut a simple broadband/cable modem sharing connection speed by a factor of 3-5x. This is amazing. On the other hand, I buy a simple cheap router like a di-604 or linksys befsr41 that has no VPN and the speed almost reaches the 5mbit/s cap of the service. What can possibly cause this? No amount of firmware fixes it, is there something inherent in VPN routers that just puts the breaks on WAN connections?
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I swear I bought several vpn routers (mostly from linksys) and they have all cut a simple broadband/cable modem sharing connection speed by a factor of 3-5x. This is amazing. On the other hand, I buy a simple cheap router like a di-604 or linksys befsr41 that has no VPN and the speed almost reaches the 5mbit/s cap of the service. What can possibly cause this? No amount of firmware fixes it, is there something inherent in VPN routers that just puts the breaks on WAN connections?

Why are expensive VPN routers slower for a simple home broadband/cable sharing setup than cheap, non VPN routers?

A router is a networking device that forwards data packets between computer networks. Routers perform the "traffic directing" functions on the Internet. The most familiar type of routers are home and small office cable or DSL routers that simply pass data, such as web pages, email, IM, and videos between computers and the Internet. More sophisticated routers, such as enterprise routers, connect large business or ISP networks up to the powerful core routers that forward data at high speed along the optical fiber lines of the Internet backbone. Though routers are typically dedicated hardware devices, use of software-based routers has grown increasingly common.