Good evening everyone and I hope, like me, you’re all getting in the Christmas spirit.
I bought a GTVS and although it wasn’t a deal breaker I was hoping that it might be a bit faster using Surfshark than my 2019 Shield Pro was but alas no joy no what I tried I couldn’t get it to download any quicker than 200mb on a 1Gig line and yes that should be plenty enough to stream from Kodi but when streaming large 4K files then I encountered a certain amount of buffering and again I tried different options but still stayed the same.
Anyway, I decided that I wanted to purchase my own router and put the Virgin Media Hub 5 into Modem Mode. I got a TP-Link BE550 from that Jeff Bezos fella for £199. Yes it’s probably overkill for a 1gig link and tri-band Wifi 7 but I have a Pixel 8 Pro which is Wifi 7 so I call it future proofing lol
Late last night I set up Surfshark to run from the router and only the GTVS as the only device to use the VPN.
I used Analiti to test the speeds on the Shield so I thought it would be best to again use that. Well, my giddy aunt, the speeds gone from under 200mb to around 800mb so I’d say that a hell of an improvement at 4 times faster.
This is just my experience so it may not be the same for everyone but if it’s something you are considering then I thought it’s worth and at least with Jeff you can send it back for a fulll refund lol.
I’m considering doing this later on.Thanks for the input about this.
A little after I posted I looked at Google News and there is a story there about the US possibly banning TP-Link routers amid national security concerns so it’s also something to consider.Telegraph article about TP-Link possible being banned in the US.
Congrats on the new router and yes a router most often will solve the vpn issue. It’s a device made for that and takes the load off the various streaming devices.
I noticed recently with the Surfshark app on the GTVS that when I went to double check to make sure the VPN was running, I have OCD with certain things lol, that it would keep asking to me to allow notifications before it would connect even though it shouldn’t have been disconnected once the GTVS was taken out of sleep mode but I suspect that was a bug in a new release.
I’m gonna find the largest 4K file on Kodi to stream to see if the buffering was a speed issue or if it’s something else.
So after reading this I figured out how to run Surfshark on my router under the “Client” tab. It seems to work well. When going to a tv I had to turn off the vpn. So now it runs from the router but the icon flashes in red. Do we have any alternatives for knowing if the vpn is turned on?
when on a vpn monitor dot and others do not work. I have seen instances of on screen notifications but never really looked into them. If you set it up on a router with kill switch enabled the vpn is either on or off and nothing working would be your indicator…remember this before you tear everything apart, however very rarely will the vpn go down.
edit…just remember to check the ip with something like analiti to verify its on.
I use the TP-Link Tether app on my phone if I feel the need to check but to be honest I’m a lot more confident in the VPN staying on with the router than I am with the app on the GTVS.
Thank you gentlemen. 
I use ATT Fiber for my internet connection. I cannot directly install a third-party VPN service on the ATT supplied router; instead, I would have to use AT&T’s built-in “ActiveArmor” feature which includes a VPN option, accessible through router settings by navigating to the security section and enabling the VPN functionality within the ActiveArmor suite.
Has anyone tried this? Would it give the same anonimity as Surfshark? Or should I just go buy a router that lets me install SS so I can test for increased speeds?
I have Surfshark set up on the Asus, RT-AX86U router set up as in Troy’s video and I have not had any problems with it. It is daisy chained back to my Netgear router for Comcast.
With SS on the router, I typically get 3 times the speed of having SurfShark on the individual boxes. I have a 300 plan and the speeds to the boxes are now 320-340.
I watched a live football (soccer to my US friends lol) match tonight via my IPTV service and it was a high profile game so I would normally expect a bit of buffering when it’s streaming live TV in 4K and I don’t know whether it’s pure coincidence or luck but the stream hasn’t buffered once all game and if that continues to be the trend for me with IPTV then this new router is looking an even better buy and investment.
I also played a 50GB RD 4K stream last night without it buffering so I’ll try and increase the size of files I can stream to see if I reach a point where the file size causes buffering although even at that point it could be a simple fix that didn’t resolve the buffering of large file sizes before when I was just using the SS app on the GTVS.
As I said when I opened this thread, these are my own personal observations and opinions but if you facing issues with your VPN causing Kodi and/or your IPTV streams to buffer then it would be worth taking a punt on a router with VPN and getting it from a no quibbles return policy company just in case it doesn’t resolve your issues.
I use Windscribe vpn on a new BE880 tp-link. I upgraded my wifi from 80 to 200 mb for $4 more a month. I now run wifi 7 with a strong signal throughout the home. Also, setting up vpn on router was a wiz. I use to pay for that…lol. I don’t think I could have done any better.
I would buy my own wifi7 router and install anything I want. Once the vpn is installed then your provider ATT cannot see any data transfers.
I would never, ever use my ISPs VPN. I use an Orbi mesh router connected to my ISP’s router, and all my clients use that. You could try that instead of installing on your ATT router. Just be sure to turn off the wireless radio on the ATT router if you do.
I hate the ISPs routers, so never use them for anything other than getting a connection to my own router.
Welcome Eric 
Appreciate this advice. Do you disable both router and wifi on ATT’s box (assuming that’s possible) to avoid any IP conflicts with 2 linked routers and configure it as a bridge? Then connect an Orbi mesh router via to the modem via the ATT bridge and install the VPN on the Orbi?
You want Gli-net or native OpenWRT