Slow AirVPN Speeds (0.50MB/s Down or less)

[Samad 2]

I've been using AirVPN for around a year and in the past 1-2 months my AirVPN speed has slowed to a crawl. I mainly use the servers in Sweden & the Netherlands (Including some of the new Netherlands servers) and used to routinely get speeds of 5 to 10 MB (Not bits, bytes) down.

 

I have two different internet connections I use now (One is 12Mb/s down, the other is 50Mb/s down), and on both my speed is NEVER above 0.50MB/s down on any server outside of the US. I've tried over a dozen different servers in Europe and none of them work quickly. In fact, I just did the brand new AirVPN speed test on two servers from the netherlands (Ophiuchi and Smyrna) and one from Germany (Wezen) and all three peaked at 0.35MB/s or slower down.

 

Do you have any suggestions? I really enjoy the service and just convinced one of my friends to sign up for one of the three month periods to try it out, but these speeds are just too slow to bear.

[Staff 10014]

Hello!

 

Given that you experienced lower performance suddenly, and that the available bandwidth and the overall performance of our service increased very much recently, maybe your ISP started traffic shaping. Have you tried to connect to different VPN servers ports? If not, please test port 53 (UDP) to begin with.

 

Kind regards

[Samad 2]

Hiya, I just wanted to say I went into Preferences in the AirVPN client and tried out port 53 like you said and immediately by speeds jumped several fold! The test I just performed with the new Speed Test showed an out-tunnel speed of over 7Mb/s and an in-tunnel speed of 5Mb/s down, a huge improvement!

 

I'll try out various servers to see which is fastest, thanks for the great tip

 

Out of curosity, if you have time as I know you are very busy, why did this work? Why would what port the traffic was on matter in any case?

[Staff 10014]

Hiya, I just wanted to say I went into Preferences in the AirVPN client and tried out port 53 like you said and immediately by speeds jumped several fold! The test I just performed with the new Speed Test showed an out-tunnel speed of over 7Mb/s and an in-tunnel speed of 5Mb/s down, a huge improvement!

 

I'll try out various servers to see which is fastest, thanks for the great tip

 

Out of curosity, if you have time as I know you are very busy, why did this work? Why would what port the traffic was on matter in any case?

 

Hello,

 

performance improved probably because your ISP performs traffic shaping on a port/protocol-basis or deprioritizes certain packets. UDP traffic to port 53 is less likely to be capped or deprioritized because it is normally made of DNS queries. Anyway, what you experience is a hint of possible illegal behavior from your ISP, IF you live in the EU and you have not been informed in a clear, comprehensive and understandable way in the contract about limitations on services and protocols (when such limitations are allowed by national and Community laws). Please see Directive 2009/136/EC (amending directive 2002/22/EC article 20):

 

14) Articles 20 to 23 shall be replaced by the following:

‘Article  20

Contracts

1.

Member States shall ensure that, when subscribing to

services providing connection to a public communications

network and/or publicly available electronic communications

services, consumers, and other end-users so requesting, have

a right to a contract with an undertaking or undertakings

providing such connection and/or services. The contract shall

specify in a clear, comprehensive and easily accessible form

at least:

 

[...]

 

— information on any other conditions limiting access

to and/or use of services and applications, where

such conditions are permitted under national law in

accordance with Community law,

 

[...]

 

— information on any procedures put in place by the

undertaking to measure and shape traffic so as to

avoid filling or overfilling a network link, and infor­

mation on how those procedures could impact on

service quality,

 

Kind regards