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Hi,

 

I got yesterday a 3-day subscription to AirVPN for testing (before bying a longer subscription) but I can't make it work. The main symptom is the extremely low speeds.

My PC (Windows 7 64bit Prof) is on a Gigabit line. My normal speeds, according to speedtest.net, are around 500-600mbps (down and up). With AirVPN connected, my speed usually gets lower than 10mbps!

Sometimes I get good speeds (60-100mbps) but as soon as I start uTorrent, the connection stalls to the point even DNS resolving fails.

 

Something I noticed: the TAP adapter always says "Unintedified network" and, according to ipconfig its "Default Gateway" is empty. Is that normal?

 

I have tried both OpenVPN and the AirVPN app. in both cases the logs are clean (no errors or warnings) but the problem persists.

Also I tried uninstalling everything relevant (even the TAP adapter) and reinstalling but nothing changed.

I know my ISP is ok with OpenVPN. They use it for some of their services too.

 

So, any ideas on how to resolve this mess?

Or at least how to get some usable debbuging info?

 

Thanks!

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Hello!

 

Just to make sure, are you using the latest updated AirVPN client? In the client did you select a server with the lowest latency? Sometimes the "connect to reccommended server" doesn't pick the fastest server for you.

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Hi!

 

Thank you for your answer!

 

I downloaded the app yesterday from here:

https://airvpn.org/windows/ (Windows Vista/7, .exe installer, 64bit).

Later, after one of the unistalls, I tried the 32bit OpenVPN but didn't change anything.

 

About servers, I didn't check the latency but I tried quite a few, using both UDP and TCP.

They where located mostly in Netherlands, Germany and Sweden.

There were some variations in the results (eg down:10mbps and up170mbps) but they  seem to be random.

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When I was having slow speeds I asked the staff about it and this was the answer they gave me that work perfectly! Try this (see below) and let me know if that helps.

 

Change buffer from 128 to 256 kB (in "AirVPN" -> "Preferences" -> "Advanced" -> "General"). Click "Save" and start a new VPN connection.

 

Hope this solves your problem!

 

 

Also, I am very jealous of your internet speed! You are very lucky!

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 I saw thatsetting yesterday but didn't play with it.

After your post I did some experimenting and it's true that 256kb gives me quite good results (around 60mbps).   

But as soon as I start uTorrent, the connection stalls really badly.

A weird thing: when I'm connected to AirVPN, uTorrent takes a lot more time to close. And after it closes, everything goes to normal!

 

 

Also, I am very jealous of your internet speed! You are very lucky!

I know, I'm really lucky. But there is no way to become connectable in that network.

So I'm looking for a fast VPN service with port forwarding.

 

Thank you again for your time and your answer!

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Port forwarding was the first thing I tried. I managed to test it once and it's working.

After reading that thread, I also disabled upnp.

 

Unfortunately all this is quite useless, because uTorrent kills my connection completely.

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After extensive experimenting, I'm afraid the problem is in my network's configuration. Something I (obviously) cannot change.

So for know I'm going to use a VPN service that provides both OpenVPN and PPTP.

I know PPTP works, so I'll have a usable service and the opportunity to further test the OpenVPN issue.

 

Well, sorry none of my solutions worked. I wonder what is causing the problem.

Thank you for your time anyway!

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what DNS servers do you use?

 

Try to change it to Google public DNS (8.8.8.8 , 8.8.4.4)

 

Normally you'll see a huge leap  in speed.

 

It is worth adding OVPN custom's directives (Preference->Advance->OVPN directives):

route-method exe
route-delay 2
sndbuf 524288-rcvbuf 524288

Could you explain what the custom directives do? Never heard of those before so I'm a little curious.

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Thank you very much for all your answers!

 

My ISP doesn't throttle openvpn. At least not willingly. It could be a misconfiguration problem.

 

After using lsat's suggestions and playing a little with my physical adapter's settings, I managed to get some pretty good speeds like this:

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4788113712 (Aquilae server)

 

But the uTorrent problem remains!

A couple of minutes after I start uTorrent 2.2.1, my connection stalls and I can't even view webpages (with uTorrent speeds arount 20-50kbps at best).

The only way to keep the connection alive, is to leave only one torrent running in uTorrent!

Without VPN or with my previous VPN service, uTorrent could easily handle 200-300 running torrents.

Also tried Deluge, in case there was some app-specific problem with uTorrent.

But it's worse. With Deluge, even one active torrent kills my connection!

 

During that time, I get in AirVPN's app log some messages like:

". 2015.10.30 00:48:34 - Updating systems & servers data ..., 1° try failed (The operation has timed out)"

Obviously my connection is REALLY dead!

 

Any ideas?

Thanks again for all your answers!

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Could you go to your network adapters and check which driver version your TAP-adapter driver is? If you're on 9.0.0.21, try downgrading to 9.0.0.9 (I'm able to do it by clicking "Roll back", not sure if you can find the older drivers online). Also go into the settings in the AirVPN Eddie client and make sure that "Disable driver upgrade" is checked under advanced settings so that it doesn't update the driver to the 21 version when you connect.

 

I was playing with settings today and using the 9.0.0.21 drivers I had the exact same issue where as soon as I started a torrent my connection speeds would drop completely. The 9.0.0.21 drivers are known to cause issues on some systems as well, on my Windows 7 desktop machine they do not work while on my Windows 10 laptop there's no issue.

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Thank you very, VERY much!

I could never imagine that a faulty driver could do that!

 

For anyone with the same problem: I could not "Roll back" the driver so I uninstalled it (Control Panel -> Uninstall a Program -> TAP Windows).

Then downloaded and installed tap-windows-9.9.1.exe from here:

http://swupdate.openvpn.org/community/releases/

 

The change did have a small negative impact on the upload speed but I'm happy I have a working VPN connection again!

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Thanks S.O.A for your suggestion on changing the buffer from 128 to 256 kB (in "AirVPN" -> "Preferences" -> "Advanced" -> "General"). Click "Save" and start a new VPN connection.

I didnt have that option in "General" to change the buffer until I updated to the latest version.

Had problems with speed for months!

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Hello I had the same problem and fixed it with rolling back the driver indeed.

It's nice to know what causes it but security wise, downgrading should be only a temporary solution... who is responsible for the TAP drivers?
Is there anyway to report this and make sure the in the future the new drivers will be working as they should?

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Could you go to your network adapters and check which driver version your TAP-adapter driver is? If you're on 9.0.0.21, try downgrading to 9.0.0.9 (I'm able to do it by clicking "Roll back", not sure if you can find the older drivers online). Also go into the settings in the AirVPN Eddie client and make sure that "Disable driver upgrade" is checked under advanced settings so that it doesn't update the driver to the 21 version when you connect.

 

I was playing with settings today and using the 9.0.0.21 drivers I had the exact same issue where as soon as I started a torrent my connection speeds would drop completely. The 9.0.0.21 drivers are known to cause issues on some systems as well, on my Windows 7 desktop machine they do not work while on my Windows 10 laptop there's no issue.

 
I had the same problems for about 2 weeks.  Affected both uTorrent client 3.2.3 and all browsers - (latest Chrome/IE/Firefox)  on Win 8.1 64bit. I noticed my Windows TAP driver had been updated to 9.0.0.21 on 11/5/15.  
 
I rolled it back using Windows properties to 9.0.0.9.  So far after several hours of testing the issue is no longer happening. 
 
Getting good  consistent download speeds from Amsterdam servers.   
 
Thanks for the thread - been hacking away at this for a week or so. :good

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It's nice to know what causes it but security wise, downgrading should be only a temporary solution... who is responsible for the TAP drivers?

Is there anyway to report this and make sure the in the future the new drivers will be working as they should?

 

I may be wrong but I think the developers of OpenVPN are responsible for TAP drivers too.

There are plenty of threads about this on the OpenVPN forums and it seems the devs are aware of the problem. For example:

https://forums.openvpn.net/topic16933.html

https://forums.openvpn.net/topic17962.html

 

Let's hope there will be a solution soon.

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It's nice to know what causes it but security wise, downgrading should be only a temporary solution... who is responsible for the TAP drivers?

Is there anyway to report this and make sure the in the future the new drivers will be working as they should?

 

I may be wrong but I think the developers of OpenVPN are responsible for TAP drivers too.

There are plenty of threads about this on the OpenVPN forums and it seems the devs are aware of the problem. For example:

https://forums.openvpn.net/topic16933.html

https://forums.openvpn.net/topic17962.html

 

Let's hope there will be a solution soon.

I suggested to AirVPN staff that they could add this problem to FAQ, but understandably they don't want to support an old driver. A new driver that fixes the issues would be perfect! Until then I'll keep referring people with speed issues to this thread.

 

 

Another update on this issue. I had a look at the drivers for my Intel on-board network adapter and noticed the drivers were from 2011, pretty old. I uninstalled them and installed brand new drivers from Intel and currently my system seems stable with the 9.0.0.21 TAP-drivers. If you have an Intel network adapter you might want to look at the drivers as  you might need an update too.

 

Edit: After testing some more I can say that with newer Intel-drivers my connection will still be unstable during P2P-use on 9.0.0.21 but my connection is not killed completely. It will fluctuate from 0-7MB/s constantly. Still sticking with 9.0.0.9 as my speed and connection is stable on those.

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