Evaluation of WireGuard and OpenVPN VPN solutions

Abstract: This project evaluates two types of VPN solutions–WireGuard and OpenVPN.The evaluation is done by four different experiments to measure the maximum throughputof each of the VPN solutions, and a theoretical study on the encryption techniquesthat each VPN solution use. Experiments were conducted using a network performancemeasurement tool called IPerf. By applying static parameters that control themeasurements, such as transferring regular and zip file types, measuring throughputwhen the compression is enabled on the VPN channel and when it is disabled, also,applying measurements with the conditions of the same parameters but with differentoperating systems when using both VPN solutions.one of the measurement results shows that the throughput is about 93 Mbps forWireGuard comparing it with 56 Mbps and 59Mbps for OpenVPN when sendingregular and compressed files respectively.In conclusion, throughput can vary slightly depending on the measurement tooland the version of the software used. Also, the buffer of the measurement tool hasan important role when measuring the throughput, it gives different throughput andpacket loss results which depends on the size of that buffer. Moreover, According to atheoretical study, throughput can also vary depending on the speed of the encryptionalgorithm used. Both VPN solutions use many encryption algorithms, such as AESin OpenVPN, while WireGuard uses ChaCha20 with Poly1305.