The long-in-development OpenVPN DCO kernel driver for providing data channel offloading (DCO) to yield faster OpenVPN performance looks like it’s now in a state for upstreaming with the Linux 6.16 kernel.
The OpenVPN DCO kernel driver can allow for faster performance than the purely user-space OpenVPN implementation that exists now for virtual private networking. Benchmarks shown by OpenVPN Inc have indicated very significant performance advantages from this kernel driver:
After the kernel driver patches were recently revised a 25th time, it looks like everything is squared away for its premier in the mainline Linux kernel.
I was excited to see this week the OpenVPN DCO patches have been queued within the net-next.git tree. With all the driver patches now part of the “net-next” networking subsystem queue, they should be submitted for the Linux 6.16 merge window in late May / early June barring any new issues from being discovered in the next month. Thus by the time of the autumn 2025 Linux distribution patches we could be enjoying much better OpenVPN performance for those relying on it for your virtual private networking needs.
