Should I use IKEv2 or OpenVPN?

I'm setting up a VPN at home for the first time and I'm wondering which protocol to use.

The scenario is that my home IP address will be using a VPN to connect to the outside world, but the outside world will have an IP address of my own. It will be connecting from a phone, but also connected to a PS3, an XBox 360, and possibly a couple of other devices. All these devices will be connected to a router. I'm trying to decide between IKEv2 and OpenVPN, and I have some questions:

IKEv2 seems to be used more for IPSec tunnels and OpenVPN is more for PPTP and L2TP tunnels, so would I better off using OpenVPN? I've read that OpenVPN uses UDP packets and IKEv2 uses TCP packets. Is this important? Which protocol will be able to handle the most simultaneous connections? I understand that OpenVPN can scale to 256 simultaneous connections, but I'm not sure how many simultaneous connections IKEv2 can handle. OpenVPN is great if you want to use it for PPTP (point-to-point tunneling protocol) or L2TP (layer 2 tunneling protocol) VPN connections. OpenVPN doesn't do any encryption at all, so the connection between your client and your server has to be secured.

If you're using OpenVPN for an IPSec VPN connection, then OpenVPN will not work. OpenVPN is designed to connect to a server, and IPSec is designed to be used between two clients.

If you're using OpenVPN for an IPSec VPN connection, you should use OpenVPN 2.1 or higher. If you're using OpenVPN 3.0 or higher, then you don't need to worry about what protocol it's using.

If you want to use IKEv2 for IPSec VPN connections, then you need to specify the port for the IKE exchange. A lot of people use 9984 for IKEv2, but you can change that with the portrange argument to openvpn. You'll want to specify a range of ports for both sides (your client and your server). You'll need to look into the IKEv2 protocol a little bit to figure out how this works, but it's pretty simple.

Which is better WireGuard or IKEv2?

WireGuard and IKEv2 are both VPNs, right?

Both are protocols for creating secure point-to-point or point-to-multipoint secure communications between endpoints. But which is better, if either? The short answer is: it depends. The long answer is that it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Which is better at what? Both WireGuard and IKEv2 are good at many things. We'll cover the benefits of each protocol and then compare them using a number of criteria.

WireGuard vs IKEv2: The Basics. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, creates a tunnel over an untrusted network to provide secure communications. The tunnel is established by encrypting traffic and adding a header that the other endpoint can use to verify the authenticity of the connection.

IKEv2 and WireGuard both support the same capabilities, but they're implemented differently. WireGuard is designed to be lightweight and extremely configurable, while IKEv2 is designed to be very efficient at the cost of some features.

WireGuard and IKEv2 support: Point-to-Point Encryption. Authentication. User-Defined Authentication. Multiple Authentications. Encrypted Session Description Protocol (ESDPA). Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS). Routing. Traffic Shaping. Tunnel Authentication. NAT Traversal. Remote Control. Remote Management. Router Advertisement. IPSec GRE. IPsec ESP. VPN Site-to-Site. Both WireGuard and IKEv2 can also act as a Gateway device, providing access to another network. For example, WireGuard can act as a tunnel gateway for accessing a private network. That's useful in situations where you want to secure local networks from accessing a larger network that isn't already trusted.

We'll cover WireGuard's ability to act as a gateway later. WireGuard vs IKEv2: Features. Here are some key differences between WireGuard and IKEv2.