Takeaway Points
- WireGuard is an excellent choice today for high encryption strength and high speed due to less complexity and in-kernel operating system integration. Great choice if you don’t have to support any legacy infrastructure.
- OpenVPN while slower and considerably more complex, continues to be a good choice, particularly for larger organizations where interoperability between differing hardware, software, and legacy systems is required.
Comparison of WireGuard vs OpenVPN
Encryption technology is not new. Prior to the release of WireGuard, OpenVPN was, and remains, the de-facto leader in open source encryption protocols.
Broadly speaking, OpenVPN has been around for a long time and is a framework to implement many different encryption components. The OpenVPN protocol has absorbed many sub components over the years since inception, and excels at interoperability between different hardware and operating software. For larger organizations with legacy systems with strong interoperability requirements, OpenVPN is a good choice.
However, as you may read, the WireGuard protocol was to designed to be streamlined by choosing rational and efficient methods available today. As such, WireGuard is considerably less complex and therefore fast, while supporting strong modern encryption algorithms.