@jogi Power consumption of an OpenVPN App is out of our hands unfortunately. You might want to direct your question to OpenVPN. If they have ideas, please share here.
Personally I‘d recommend to enable OpenVPN only when really needed. And if need is constantly given, grab a bag of power banks or have your power supply handy 😉
THX!
Hello Random,
will it be possible to use all the benefits of eBlocker (like at home) if I will use the new WireGuard-VPN of a FRITZ!Box?
With the release of FRITZ OS 7.50 it should be on board.
I read that the battery consumption of WireGuard is not as high as it is for OpenVPN.
So will it be possible to use AVM FRITZ WireGuard-VPN instead of eBlocker Mobile through OpenVPN?
Best regards
@jogi I‘m not a fritzbox expert but I guess the wireguard implementation will give you access to your local network only. Actually, I doubt you can set your eBlocker as Gateway while using wireguard. This would be necessary so eBlocker gets your mobile traffic for protecting it. But maybe this can be configured somehow 🤔
Nevertheless, encrypting/decrypting VPN traffic regardless of the protocol (OpenVPN, wireguard, IPsec, PPTP, etc) needs extra CPU power. Hence electrical power from battery on mobile devices.
Maybe you can share the comparison of battery consumption of wireguard vs. OpenVPN for more background. At the very moment we see no advantage for a wireguard implementation but facts might change this… 😉
THX!
Hello,
on the website of "OPENVPN for Android ( https://ics-openvpn.blinkt.de/FAQ.html )" I found the following note:
"Battery Consumption
In my personal tests the main reason for high battery consumption of OpenVPN are the keepalive packets. Most OpenVPN servers have a configuration directive like 'keepalive 10 60' which causes the client and server to exchange keepalive packets every ten seconds.
While these packets are small and do not use much traffic, they keep the mobile radio network busy and increase the energy consumption. (See also The Radio State Machine | Android Developers)
This keepalive setting cannot be changed on the client. Only the system administrator of the OpenVPN can change the setting.
Unfortunately using a keepalive larger than 60 seconds with UDP can cause some NAT gateways to drop the connection due to an inactivity timeout. Using TCP with a long keep alive timeout works, but tunneling TCP over TCP performs extremely poorly on connections with high packet loss. (See Why TCP Over TCP Is A Bad Idea).".
Maybe this helps to optimize the eBlocker settings further.
@joe Thanks for sharing this!
@bpr To what I understand, Android needs 17sec to power down after a packet transmission. If it’s 60sec max until NAT closes UDP connections, we probably could increase keepalive to like 50sec.
Not sure if this really reduces Android power consumption - and not causing other side effects on other OSs. But maybe it’s worth testing among some brave supporters using Android 🤔
I‘m out as I don‘t own any Google 👹 based devices… ✌️
THX!
For the case I do not have to be a computer expert, I would test it.
But I think it is not so easy to change that, right?
@jogi Thanks for the offer.
The change is probably easy but it needs to be tested in our two stages environment first before a public release. And getting you onboarded on the staging system is not easy and needs much IT background (ie. root access on eBlocker) as a prerequisit.
Nevertheless, we have a team of testers and I‘d guess some are using evil OS 😉
THX!
@joe Thanks for sharing this!
Hi,
I am always very happy when I can contribute a tiny little bit to your great project.
I had also considered to offer my willingness to support. But since I know that without my own appropriate "professional" background, this would slow down the project team more than speed up the work 🙄.
Nevertheless, I would be happy to hear about your results. I'll need the mobile connection for several weeks soon, so I'm grateful for any power-saving measures.
@random although I use this evil OS, I still feel very comfortable with eBlocker 😉 🙂
Hello all,
I tried to establish a WireGuard VPN connection to the home network via a FRITZ!Box.
Admittedly, this works - as promised by AVM - very very easy.
The VPN connection from the outside to the home network is noticeably faster, especially when changing networks. To be honest, the battery consumption was hardly really noticeable despite the activated VPN. With OpenVPN, I can virtually watch the battery level drop while surfing.
But now the big BUT: Unfortunately, the advantages of the eBlocker cannot be used over this connection to the FRITZ!Box, as Random predicted. At least I couldn't get it to work.
When connecting from outside to the home network, obviously the router with WireGuard (the gateway in the home network) is considered as the end device and thus you are unfortunately without the protection of eBlocker.
That was my first and short impression, for more I unfortunately lack technical possibilities and background knowledge for more.
Maybe someone of you has other ideas or had already more success?
Does it help to set up a 2nd Raspberry and a Linux WireGuard server in the home network to get the protection of eBlocker on the go?
@jogi We had researched the cause for battery consumption with OpenVPN and found this only affects Android. iOS goes to power saving mode automatically when OpenVPN is not used. Android does not.
From my perspective a second Raspi etc. will not work/cure your battery consumption as this would be similar to driving two cars at once: impossible 😉
We'll might update the OpenVPN keepalive policy sooner or later once someone in the team feels this is an issue and wants to intensively test it. But I honestly doubt this will significantly mitigate the issue. It's OpenVPN and Android not playing well together, unfortunately.
For the very moment, I can only repeat what has been said: Carry an extra powerbank if you are in a remote area w/o electrical power - or switch to iOS 😉
THX!
Hello Random,
I had thought to install the 2nd Raspberry as a WireGuard server in the home network and then have the protection of eBlocker on the way, but instead of OpenVPN to use WireGuard. Or would that be basically the same as with the FRITZ!Box?
Switching to iOS is not an alternative for me.
@jogi I understood your idea with the second Raspi. 👍
In theory someone with deeper Wireguard and Linux routing/iptables know-how might can set up some proprietary solution - but that's not with our team I fear.
As eBlocker is made up by volunteers and we are always short to cover the costs the only idea I have: you can think about sponsoring the eBlocker Wirecard implementation. Same as the DEVK sponsors certain features they are interested in. As @benne always says: Who pays the bill has the right of choice. 😉
THX!