remote access openvpn

[brun2025]

You are lucky, I am the the happy owner of a pfSense firewall too, and configured for OpenVPN :-D
So I can further help you to debug this if needed.

Do you have a chip on the hardware that can be used to accelerate encryption?
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/late...ators.html

I dont. I have an 10yo old watchguard device that works pretty well, but I never tried to stream a movie through the VPN, no use for my case.

Really the first thing I would test at your place is just change the quality (ie bitrate) of the movie in the web client to the lower one (420 kbps) and see if that works. and if yes you pretty much have the answer on why it is failing with higher quality.

You should also check your pfsense CPU usage when streaming through the VPN with various bitrates, and check the openvpn logs in Status > System Logs, there should obviously be some hints lying there, of your previous failed attempts.

Good news I have streaming mostly working at the moment after switching from UDP to TCP in OpenVPN on my android phone. I've tested a few files with the Web Player and Integrated Player at varying video quality 1-4 Mbps H265 and 3-10 Mbps H265 with more than adequate playback via cellular network to my NAS at home. As a result it would be safe to conclude that playback via remote wifi network shouldnt be an issue.

However, I still need to test chromecast functionality on a remote network tomorrow
Hardware SPEC

Code:

CPU Type Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz
Current: 3200 MHz, Max: 3201 MHz
4 CPUs: 1 package(s) x 4 core(s)
AES-NI CPU Crypto: Yes (active)
QAT Crypto: No
Hardware crypto AES-CBC, AES-CCM, AES-GCM, AES-ICM, AES-XTS

OpenVPN Iperf Remote Throughput Test

on mobile I should have enough throughput for a fairly high bit rate file

Code:

Server listening on 7896 (test #1)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Accepted connection from XX.XX.88.2, port 60470
[  5] local XX.XX.24.XX port 7896 connected to XX.XX.88.2 port 60482
[ ID] Interval          Transfer    Bitrate
[  5]  0.00-1.00  sec  1.00 MBytes  8.38 Mbits/sec                 
[  5]  1.00-2.00  sec  896 KBytes  7.34 Mbits/sec                 
[  5]  2.00-3.00  sec  1.12 MBytes  9.44 Mbits/sec                 
[  5]  3.00-4.00  sec  1.38 MBytes  11.5 Mbits/sec                 
[  5]  4.00-5.00  sec  1.38 MBytes  11.5 Mbits/sec                 
[  5]  5.00-6.00  sec  1.38 MBytes  11.5 Mbits/sec                 
[  5]  6.00-7.00  sec  1.50 MBytes  12.6 Mbits/sec                 
[  5]  7.00-8.00  sec  1.50 MBytes  12.6 Mbits/sec                 
[  5]  8.00-9.00  sec  1.00 MBytes  8.39 Mbits/sec                 
[  5]  9.00-10.00  sec  1.00 MBytes  8.39 Mbits/sec                 
[  5]  10.00-10.06  sec  128 KBytes  19.3 Mbits/sec                 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval          Transfer    Bitrate
[  5]  0.00-10.06  sec  12.2 MBytes  10.2 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Attached screenshot not much cpu usage while streaming