How much RAM for Raspberry PiVPN?

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CaseyJones

Young grasshopper
Sep 28, 2020
40
12
Live Oak, FL
For those running OpenVPN or WireGuard on a Raspberry Pi how much RAM do you think is necessary? The Raspberry Pi 4 comes in 1GB ($34), 2GB ($35), 4GB ($55) and 8GB ($75). It seems to me getting the 8GB Pi makes the most sense. May be complete overkill and not necessary, seen plenty of posts of where people are running PiVPN setups with the 2GB. Would the VPN connection (speed/quality) be affected by the amount of RAM?

ex. using the VPN to access UI3 on my home network which consists of 6 x 4MP and 6 x 8MP cams, am I better off going with the Pi 4 w/8GB RAM?
 
I think VPN performance is much more processor-dependent vs RAM driven. Not sure how much benefit you really get from having more RAM. Probably not a lot in standard config and typical use. The encryption and I/O are the main bottlenecks. Only way to really improve that much is with hardware-based encryption which I don't think the the Pi 4 has. You're probably just about as well off with the 2GB for that purpose but I have no real-world testing to support that. Maybe go with the 4GB as a compromise. If you want to run other things on the same Pi then more benefit to more RAM.

Edit to add:

See hardware requirements below. Not specific to the Pi but reading this OpenVPN doesn't really seem to benefit from RAM much in the case of a single connection.

System Requirements

openvpn.net openvpn.net
 
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