Speed issues?

[AndyG 0]

Hi,

I'm having some speed issues, and was wondering if you had any tips.

I have 70mbps/10mbps bandwidth from my ISP and my router (Linksys WRT54GL running DD-WRT) should be able to utilize about 45mbps of that. When I download stuff (for instance torrents) I often get close to 40 mbps (I guess there's a bit of overhead there) without running VPN. When bypassing the router I easily get the full 70mbps.

However, when I connect through AirVPN (usually Draconis) I rarely get past 20mbps download and 3mbps upload. I've tried ports 80 and 443 with both TCP and UDP, neither seems to have any increased/decreased effect over the other.

I take care to test the speed while the bandwidth utilization on the VPN server is low, which should imply that I theoretically can utilize my full bandwith (45mbps with current router), however, this is not the case.

Also worth noting is that I've never experienced any packet prioritizing from my ISP, so I doubt that's the case.

Any ideas on things I can try, or am I merely expecting too much and should be satisfied with the current speed?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Br, Andy

[yerozard 1]

hello

your router is pretty old im afraid so the speed drop your experience when running openvpn is completely normal.

openvpn has a heavy encryption which makes it hard to break but that also makes it require more computing power to encrypt and decrypt data.

you have to get your hands on ether a top off the line router or you have to build your own router using for example an old computer if you want to be able to utilize all your bandwidth.

hope that helped

[AndyG 0]

Hi, and thanks for your help.

I should probably have been more clear on the fact that I don't use the built in VPN feature of DD-WRT. I am using the AirVPN client from my computer. As such, shouldn't the router pass through the traffic as any other traffic, and in that case, utilize the full speed it can handle (40-45mbps)?

I also plan to purchase a new router, most likely Asus NT-R66U, shortly. But in line with the above I don't see how that can help me get more than the ~20 I am currently getting.

Please educate me if I'm wrong :-)

Br, Andy

[Staff 9972]

Hello!

AndyG, should you use OpenVPN in DD-WRT with your router you should expect 7-8 Mbit/s at best, due to CPU power as explained by yerozard. 20 Mbit/s on Draconis with a connection from your computer appears perfectly normal. You have to also consider that the 70/10 Mbit/s provided by your ISP are the maximum peak bandwidth you can obtain, not a guaranteed bandwidth. Routing and peering are to be taken into consideration.

That said, please test all the other EU 1 Gbit/s servers (Tauri, Castor and Delphini) to check whether you can obtain a better performance. All of them are located in data centers with POPs directly connected to all the major tier1 EU providers (including the "big four").

Please feel free to let us know your experience with the above servers.

Kind regards

[yerozard 1]

well if your running the vpn client on your pc the router probably isnt the problem but i would be good if you plugged your pc directly into the modem or whatever you plug your router into and then connect to the vpn server to make sure that it isnt the problem

draconis peering sucks which might be the reason for the poor speed so might wanna try to change to castor or tauri to see if that gets you a higher speed

also your isp could have bad peering as well so you could try changing isp aswell

... admin wrote while was typing

[AndyG 0]

Hi, and thanks again for all the help!

I've only occasionally not utilized the full purchased bandwidth from my ISP. I find that to be the case with most ISP's in my country, fortunately :-)

I did try a quick speed test with the other 1gbps servers. While Tauri and Castor would not give me over 9mbps either of them, Delphini let me get 35mbps (still via the router), which is a wast improvement. I guess I've been expecting Draconis to provide the best speed, since it's closer.

I'll try more with Delphini, and eventually upgrade to a better router, and see if I can keep that good speed in the future.

Thanks a lot for quick responses and fruitful help!

Edit: after some more testing torrents with Delphini I am getting a lot more unstable speeds. The speed fluctuate from ~20mbps and 0mbps. I am beginning to think the router is indeed the culprit - failing because of too many connections, which also explains why I don't get over 20mbps, while speedtest.net repeatedly reports above 30mbps on the same connection.

Br, Andy

[Staff 9972]

Hi, and thanks again for all the help!

Edit: after some more testing torrents with Delphini I am getting a lot more unstable speeds. The speed fluctuate from ~20mbps and 0mbps. I am beginning to think the router is indeed the culprit - failing because of too many connections, which also explains why I don't get over 20mbps, while speedtest.net repeatedly reports above 30mbps on the same connection.

Br, Andy

Hello!

You're welcome.

Just for your and other readers information, a quick clarification (otherwise someone might think that security is compromised). The router might be the cause of such dramatic fluctuations, but not for the number of connections. The router sees only one connection on one port. The effective number of connections are handled on one side by your OpenVPN client and on the other side by our servers. The "real" headers and payload of every packet (both outgoing and incoming) are already/still encrypted when passing through the router, therefore they are not accessible to it. You might like to check the CPU load on your computer when you experience a bandwidth drop, just to see if there's some bottleneck on the OpenVPN client side (our servers have usually an approximate 0 average load).

Kind regards