Virtual private networks with WireGuard

Posted Mar 6, 2018 16:42 UTC (Tue) by Lekensteyn (guest, #99903)
Parent article: Virtual private networks with WireGuard

> It will be interesting to try WireGuard at the next conference with an overloaded network to see how well it copes with packet loss.

WireGuard encapsulates IP packets in its transport messages and does no attempt on retransmission (leaving this up to the upper layers). The initial handshake consists of only two (small) UDP datagrams (one for each direction), there are no explicit acknowledgement messages.

Compare this to (for example), OpenVPN with its TLS authentication mode that requires many more UDP datagrams to transport the full TLS handshake (including large certificates), it seems likely that WireGuard is faster to establish a session.