Speed Tests Confirm WireGuard is the Key to VPN Performance

Netmaker is a VPN that relies on WireGuard to forge fast, secure connections between devices and networks. WireGuard has demonstrated superior performance in industry speed tests, and so we wanted to run our own tests to determine how Netmaker performs against pure WireGuard, as well as other standard VPN alternatives.

In our tests, Netmaker demonstrated exceptional performance, especially on high-speed networks. On gigabit networks (1.25-2 gbps / 10.0 gbps burst), Netmaker achieved consistent data transfer speeds averaging 7.88 Gbits/sec, nearly identical to kernel WireGuard alone at 7.89 Gbits/sec. 

4. High Performance: Devices have a high-speed link, and VPN is performance optimized (between VPCs on AWS with a 10GB network)

We performed these tests on virtualized Linux servers using a variety variety of server specs, locations, and networks, running each specification multiple times, and averaging the results. Across all tests, it was clear that the WireGuard-based candidates (Netmaker, Tailscale, and kernel WireGuard) were vastly outperformed the other candidates, including ZeroTier, Nebula, OpenVPN, and Tinc. The WireGuard-based candidates consistently transferred data between 2-20 times faster than these alternatives, and achieved similar results.

We took the top three candidates, Netmaker, Tailscale, and WireGuard, and ran an additional high performance scenariour, using a 10 Gigabit network, and performance optimizations to maximum transmission speed.

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