Hi guys,
I’m looking to setup a modem and a wireless network that is configured an American network through wifi. I have a VPN subscription that offers this service, however I need to get a router capable of handling this. My research indicates that wrt and tomato firmware can indeed handle VPN.
What is the cheapest/best way to get VPN connectivity through a router?
The typical CPU in a router is very underpowered compared to the ones found in a PC, so you should not expect to be able to get the same kind of speeds when compared to running the VPN client on your desktop. Consumer grade routers aren't made to handle VPN traffic, just getting it to handle SSL already takes up a lot of CPU time.
I'd look at getting an ASUS RT-ACxx series (e.g ASUS RT-68U with 1ghz dual core CPU). I'm running Asuswrt-Merlin and it has a built in Open VPN client. Haven't tested the performance though.
Other alternative is the Raspberry Pi3 and USB -> Ethernet dongle.