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I have reasonably fast broadband, which on my Mac, using Safari 6, is perfect for my uses. Webpages load quickly, and I am extremely satisfied with it overall.

My Raspberry Pi is another story. I can't link to my speeds, so you will have to trust me.

Raspberry Pi, Midori
Upload: 1.01 Mbps
Download: 1.16 Mbps

This, is far less than my Mac's speed.

Mac OSX, Safari 6
Upload: 7.44 Mbps
Download: 52.09 Mbps

Why is this?

NOTE: It is important that my PI can run at at least 10/3: I want to use it as a Personal VPN.

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  • Did you also test that with the same page and if yes which flash plugin alternative did you use. If you did then the answer is clearly that the cpu is on 100% load, if not it depends on how you did it.
    – Max
    Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 19:33
  • @max I have not installed Flash on Midori. I believe that I used one of the find-my-ip websites on my Pi.
    – xxmbabanexx
    Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 19:38

3 Answers 3

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The Raspberry Pi has network hardware hanging off a USB controller, and needs the support of the not-very-brawny CPU to handle every byte. It's probably not the computer for this job. Something like a GuruPlug Server (if they've fixed the power supply/overheating problems that plagued earlier GlobalScale Plugs) might be better.

Just for lulz, I ran a Java speedtest from DSLreports.com on my Raspberry Pi. It maxed out at 5.2m/2m.

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  • I'm curious if you were to overclock (or underclock, to be safe) the CPU, would the results scale linearly?
    – user2813274
    Commented Aug 21, 2014 at 19:20
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Try running top or opening the task manager while you run the test and see what your CPU usage is doing, I tried running a torrent client on my PI, even overclocked the CPU would spike and the GUI would almost lock up when I got close to 1Mbs of speed.

You can look at this thread for an idea of the bandwidth someone else is getting running just a VPN client, let alone a server Low bandwidth internet over VPN

I am not sure if Hamachi would be much more efficient to be able to use your whole 10/3 internet connection, than openvpn however its worth a try.

I would recommend a older computer or laptop to use for a Personal VPN server as it will provide more power for processing the encryption for the VPN. But will take up ore space and power.

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Scruss is right, the raspberry pi CPU is the problem. Try running your network speed tests w/o the desktop running. I run a proxy on my pi via ssh dynamic port forwarding, and I can get up to 5Mb/s downloads and 1Mb/s uploads via qbittorrent on windows. (Attempted with Linux mint's Iso). Now, this was done on a enterprise class network (a school w/ gigabit Ethernet.) So the raspberry pi was maxing out its 100Mbit connection.

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