Speedify's Performance Enhancing Proxy (PEP)

This article explains what Speeidfy's Performance Enhancing Proxy (PEP) feature does, how it improves download speeds and reduces CPU usage on router hardware, and how to turn it on or off in Speedify.

What Is Speedify's Performance Enhancing Proxy?

The Performance Enhancing Proxy (PEP) is a TCP acceleration technology built into Speedify. It increases data transfer efficiency, especially on wireless, long-range, or high-latency connections. Originally developed for satellite internet links, PEP now improves performance across bonded and mobile environments as well.

When client devices send TCP internet traffic through Speedify, PEP intercepts the data locally, repackages it using Speedify's optimized transport protocol, and then reassembles it as standard TCP on Speedify's servers. This allows data to move more smoothly even when latency or packet loss would normally slow things down.

PEP is especially valuable for users running Speedify on OpenWrt or Linux routers.

How PEP Improves Performance

PEP reduces the per-packet processing overhead that limits performance on smaller router CPUs. By aggregating TCP acknowledgments and transferring larger data blocks at once, Speedify can achieve:

• Higher peak download and upload throughput for client internet traffic
• Lower CPU utilization at equivalent speeds
• Improved bonding efficiency when combining internet connections with different latencies

The table below shows real-world throughput results comparing performance with and without PEP enabled:

In real-world scenarios, Speedify's PEP typically delivers a significant increase in peak download and upload throughput, or comparable speeds with reduced CPU load. This allows routers to support more users and maintain high-quality streaming performance.

Enabling or Disabling PEP in the App

You can turn the Performance Enhancing Proxy on or off from the Speedify app or your router management page.

Step 1

Open the Speedify app or your router management page.

Step 2

Go to Settings › Session Settings.

Step 3

Select Performance Enhancing Proxy.

Step 4

Choose On or Off, then return to save your settings.

Managing PEP from the Command Line

You can also control PEP behavior using the Speedify CLI. This allows you to not only turn PEP on or off, but also select which traffic is handled through the PEP versus the standard TUN interface.

To view the current settings, use:

speedify_cli show settings

If PEP is enabled, you’ll see a line similar to:

"pep" : true

Turn PEP On or Off

speedify_cli pep on

speedify_cli pep off

Control Traffic by IP Address

You can specify which IP addresses should be handled by PEP:

speedify_cli pep ips add <ip address> ...
speedify_cli pep ips rem <ip address> ...
speedify_cli pep ips set <ip address> ...

Examples:

speedify_cli pep ips add 192.168.1.10
speedify_cli pep ips set 192.168.1.0/24

Control Traffic by Port

PEP can also be applied selectively by port:

speedify_cli pep ports add [port[-portRangeEnd]/proto] ...
speedify_cli pep ports rem [port[-portRangeEnd]/proto] ...
speedify_cli pep ports set [port[-portRangeEnd]/proto] ...

Examples:

speedify_cli pep ports add 80/tcp 443/tcp
speedify_cli pep ports add 10000-20000/tcp

These commands let you fine-tune which types of traffic benefit from PEP acceleration.