What is WireGuard VPN?
WireGuard is one of the newest VPN protocols currently in development. It promises to be more secure, and faster than any other VPN protocol to date. While we are not ready to recommend for everyday use just yet–since it is not finished, it is a promising new technology that TorGuard is starting to implement and test.
What is WireGuard?
WireGuard was created by Jason A. Donenfeld to make a new VPN protocol that is more “modern” and “state of the art” than the current protocols the VPN industry uses. It’s implemented as a kernel virtual network interface for Linux, and the underlying technology is based on secure tunnels.
From their whitepaper, WireGuard explains that they use various techniques like ChaCha20 for symmetric encryption, Curve25519 for ECDH, BLAKE2s for hashing and keyed hashing, SipHash24 for hash table keys, and HKDF for key derivation. Once implemented, these new cryptographic techniques promise to be more secure than older VPN protocols still in use today.
WireGuard has many potential benefits that will see some real use case in the future. A lot of internet users in the present age browse by smartphone or tablet, and since WireGuard is a Kernel based VPN and uses “high-speed cryptographic primitives” it will be especially adapted for high speed use on routers or smartphone devices. This means that WireGuard as a protocol, will be excellent for 4K streaming, gaming, or heavy internet downloads.
Once finished, WireGuard should offer multiple benefits like faster speeds, better battery life, better roaming support, more reliable connections, and faster handshakes (faster established connections and reconnections).
We look forward to seeing these results with TorGuard VPN.
WireGuard vs OpenVPN?
OpenVPN was released in 2001, and while it has been constantly improved and iterated upon–and constantly audited for security bugs, it has grown into a very large code base.
OpenVPN has some 100,000 lines of code, and some 500,000 lines of code dedicated to OpenSSL encryption alone. Comparatively, WireGuard only has 4,000 lines of code.
But let’s be clear. For now, OpenVPN is extremely trustworthy and in terms of realistic use cases, has the best “blend” of speed and security. It is what you should be using until WireGuard is finished.
A lot of OpenVPN’s grievances can be largely worked around with optimized use cases like with TorGuard VPN, but WireGuard seeks to reduce a lot of these issues with a smaller and more lightweight codebase that uses more modern techniques to remain secure.
Which is Faster – WireGuard or OpenVPN? Speed test Results with TorGuard VPN
How to Use WireGuard with TorGuard VPN?
Testing out WireGuard with TorGuard VPN is very easy. For now, you can connect via your VPN router, or use the WireGuard app on your smartphone. The PC app for WireGuard is not out yet, but there is an app for Mac users.
The first thing you will need to do is “Enable WireGuard Access” and you can do this from your main account page, when you go to “Tools”. From here, you will need to click on the blue button, “Enable WireGuard”, with the server that you want.
Once you do this, you can download the config file, when you can then open in the WireGuard app on your smartphone. It should load the config file and ask for your TorGuard VPN credentials so you can load our WireGuard servers. Or if you have a VPN router, you can drag and drop the config file into the WireGuard section of your VPN router’s interface. We’ve even written a tutorial on how to use WireGuard with the GLI AR-750S.
Finally, if you have a mac, you can load the config file into the WireGuard app from the app store—like how it would work on a smartphone.
