said by parachuter2b:I'm using dd-wrt and right now I have the following in the Client IP(s) of the PPTP server tab of vpn:
192.168.1.200-255
Are you sure that you want to assign the broadcast address 192.168.1.255 to a vpn client ?
No, you configured a pool of 156 IP addresses for vpn clients, so that is your limit.
said by parachuter2b:Also, what is the max # of connections without compromising the connection speed for every client?
1 (worst case scenario where the client has a faster Internet connection then the server).
There are 3 main factors that determine how many VPN clients a server can support before service degrades for the already connected clients. For residential Internet connections it is not unusual to see 2 clients impacting each other.
The factors are:
- network bandwidth: unless the bandwidth at the VPN server exceeds the sum of the bandwidth for all connected VPN clients it will be possible for the clients to saturate the bandwidth of the Internet connection. Because of the asymmetric nature of most residential Internet connections the bandwidth calculation needs to be done twice (in upload and download direction). You could configure a bandwidth limit for each VPN tunnel that would ensure that no single VPN client can use up the entire bandwidth at the VPN server.
- cpu power: encrypted VPN connections are typically very CPU intensive. The amount of CPU power needed increases with the length of the key used to encrypt the session. When using a residential broadband router as VPN server this can be even more limiting then the network bandwidth. Depending on your security needs you can use shorter key length (or even unencrypted VPN tunnels) to reduce CPU load.
- memory: each VPN tunnel requires memory to store session keys, state information as well as sufficient packet buffers to reassemble fragmented packets and to reorder packets that arrived out of order (required for successful decryption). With residential broadband routers that amount of memory can be very limited.
Of course any configuration settings in the VPN server (max sessions, IP pool size) also limit the number of connections.