Why are uploads slower than downloads?

[ajaffarali 2]

I have a connection of 150 down and 15 up from home and when I'm not connected to a VPN, I get the full speed when using speediest. When I am connected to AirVPN, I get download speeds between 60-80 but upload speeds are usually between 2-6. Why are uploads so slow? Is it my ISP?

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

Your download throughput is not ideal, either. Have you tried other servers, ports and protocols?

[ajaffarali 2]

I'm using the default UDP 443 Port which suggests its the fastest option for a connection. Also, if it helps, using ASUS Merlin router for connecting.

I'm ok with the download speeds- I'm located in Middle East and have tried European and US servers and speed is somewhat similar.

But what I'm trying to understand is if I am getting downloads that are 60-70, that means that the VPN connection is capable of transferring at least at that speed. So then, why would uploads be so slow?

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

Depends. I can download with 50 MiB/s, too, but get throttled to exactly 2 MiB/s during the day. That is because my ISP does Deep Packet Inspection and detects BitTorrent traffic, I suspect.

Did you try a connection with your computer?
 

16 hours ago, ajaffarali said:

I'm using the default UDP 443 Port which suggests its the fastest option for a connection.

Well, for most some might need to use other ports. Back when I was a customer of German Telecom, I needed to switch to port 53 at some point because UDP/443 stopped being "good". And today you can even choose other entry IPs.

Edit: Woooaah. I never got throttled in the first place! My HDD was set to an I/O scheduler for flash and SSDs which produced a very high read and write latency, effectively resulting in drastic performance breaks after a few minutes (as more torrents went active), and exactly the symptoms I was seeing all those months and year. Edited ... by giganerd
No throttled by ISP