Severely reduced speeds, have tried everything :(

[mackerel 0]

The Problem

VPN speeds are significantly decreased despite trying to account for all variables I can think of. Significantly decreased in this case means that absolute best I can temporarily get is 250/250 out of my 500/500 connection as measured with iperf3. However, "real life" use with bittorrent and usenet is much slower. i have consistently had a max upload speed of less than 500 kB/s with transmission. downloading from usenet which normally can max out my connection is stuck at 5 to 6 MB/s (it's about 60 MB/s on same device and network w/o VPN ie ~ 480 mbps on my 500 plan). I am absolutely stumped, any advice is very much appreciated.

Steps I have taken

• Confirmed expected speed w/ iperf3 when vpn is disconnected. I tested between local machines, with remote public iperf3 servers, and between iperf3 docker container and remote public iperf3 servers (~ 1 gbps locally on gigabit ports, and ~500/500 mbps externally with my 500/500 plan as expected both directly on host and in docker). i also tested with iperf3 in gluetun container with vpn activated (best result was 180/150, most much lower)

• Tried different servers in different geographical regions, including my home country

• Tried OpenVPN vs Wireguard

• Tried using specific ports like 53 to bypass potential ISP throttling

• Tried TCP only for same reasons

• Disabled all ipv6

• Tried adjusting MTU for wireguard

• Tried LSIO wireguard docker image, gluetun docker image, and regular (non-docker) wg 

• Tried with and without VPN port forwarding (with gluetun)

• disabled UFW because at this point, why not right?

• Tried all of the above with several different VPN providers (Proton, OVPN, AirVPN) and spun up my own wireguard vpn server on two different VPS providers with same result

• I have swapped out my older router with a brand new one since the 500/500 is an upgrade from my previous 250/~25 connection and I have many devices connected. I got a slight improvement from 450 mbps down without VPN to 500+. No discernible improvement with VPN connection.

• Suspecting potential VPN throttling from my new ISP, I have even got a second ISP to try things with. both are 500/500 and provide speeds as advertised. 

• i even tried gluetun on a different computer. the second computer i tried had 11th gen i9 with 32gb ram and was debian 11 (from an older PC running current LTS ubuntu server). same issue
  
  
  Since everything is "working" (successful tunnel connection), I have no idea what I can provide in terms of logs or whatever to help resolve this. 

Edited ... by OpenSourcerer
Revert white-on-black to black-on-white

[veryhadu 2]

I'm not an expert on your problem "in particular", but if you are an AirVPN customer writing on a black background is quite depressing for someone who is looking to find solutions & it would even discourage coming to AirVPN in reading you.
Of course this is only my point of view but your list only points out the negative on your attempts to improve as if the AirVPN service was deteriorating, I hope that at this point you opened a ticket directly to support. ..
It seems like an attempt at bad publicity.
However, I hope that your change of ISP will help you get back to your previous speeds ^^

[mackerel 0]

Quote

I'm not an expert on your problem "in particular", but if you are an AirVPN customer writing on a black background is quite depressing for someone who is looking to find solutions & it would even discourage coming to AirVPN in reading you.
Of course this is only my point of view but your list only points out the negative on your attempts to improve as if the AirVPN service was deteriorating, I hope that at this point you opened a ticket directly to support. ..
It seems like an attempt at bad publicity.
However, I hope that your change of ISP will help you get back to your previous speeds ^^

You're either a troll or completely unhelpful. Next time read the post. This isn't a problem particular to AirVPN, and since I have tried literally everything I can think of and spent several hundred dollars in the process of doing so, I am seeking help on the possible causes. Preferably from people who know what they are talking about. I'll take your style advice in consideration 🙄 Edited ... by OpenSourcerer
Separete reply from quote

[veryhadu 2]

Quote

You're either a troll or completely unhelpful. Next time read the post. This isn't a problem particular to AirVPN, and since I have tried literally everything I can think of and spent several hundred dollars in the process of doing so, I am seeking help on the possible causes. Preferably from people who know what they are talking about. I'll take your style advice in consideration 🙄

From my point of view the blackish form of your post is useless like all your dollars spent... But it's your money it's not mine. For my style I use to return the compliment, yours is extremely aggressive but I also take a lesson from it.

And so yes you said it, you have tested all the possible solutions, there are no others except... And there you are right for the change of ISP you will certainly be fixed on your problem of loss of speed but until then I do not see what better you can expect or a miracle (as sometimes everything returns to normal on its own , just saying).

In addition, this is not the best section to post your problem which is not specific to AiRVPN as a problem.
I was clear and thank you. Edited ... by OpenSourcerer
Separete reply from quote

[Stalinium 44]

I see that you've been testing on Ubuntu and Debian? Have you tried a fresh Windows install or your mobile phone be it Android of iOS?
Are you sure that the two ISPs have different routing and not just reselling the exact same service under two brands? By this I mean to test/know if the last mile differs and if their network peering and routing is different. Traceroute followed up by looking at networks and ASNs your packet goes through to the destination.
Which other speedtests besides iperf did you run? Try ookla's speedtest_net first using the default server then some foreign server, test both single and multi connection modes. Then Netflix' fast.com
Do you have the option to connect via IPv6?

On 11/17/2023 at 3:34 AM, mackerel said:

Tried TCP only for same reasons

I guess the only totally different thing to try is AirVPN's OpenSSH+OpenVPN and stunnel+OpenVPN. If there's a DPI-based throttling, that should be the things to fool it.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

Mr. veryhadu, watch your language. You are being very provocative for no apparent reason.
Mr. mackerel's original post actually is something of an example to follow when asking for troubleshooting help: It describes the exact problem and what have been tried, and would've provided logs if the issue was easier to trace with them. Very few other posts boast this level of detail. So you're really barking up the wrong tree here.

Though, Mr. mackerel, setting --verb to 4 or 5 could maybe help. The config generator and Eddie default is 3, omitting some technical information. You could try setting this to 4, then connect and do something causing this throughput. Maybe someone is attentive enough to spot something.

[P.Bear 5]

I would like to add my testimony to this speed issue. I have been a NordVPN subscriber for almost 3 years. This subscription ending soon, I took advantage of the blackfriday promotion to subscribe to AirVPN.
So I currently have, and still for a few weeks, both subscriptions. And I can see that the speed when I go through AirVPN is undeniably less than with NordVPN.
So of course I can’t compare it with scientific rigour. But I use:
- The same country (in this case NL)
- The same protocol: Wireguard.

I have a Qbittorrent headless server behind (docker container) and I can easily (thanks ubiquiti) "pass" the torrent server either by AirVPN or NordVPN. I’ve done several tests. On large files (100GB for it to last long time), I’m at ~30MB/s with AirVPN, I switch on NordVPN and the speeds goes 104MB/s (after a minute, the time that the peers reconnect). I switch back to AirVPN, after 1, 2 or even 5 minutes, I still cap at ~30MBS.
Sometimes I’m at 70MB/s with AirVPN, I don’t say I'm always stuck at 30 or 40 or 50MB/s. But compared to NordVPN, I’m often below, and on the same torrent.

And I don’t think I’ve ever hit 100MB/s with AirVPN when NordVPN does.

[Staff 9972]

@P.Bear

Hello!

It's actually not easy to maintain 100 MB/s = 800 Mbit/s (1.6 Gbit/s on the server) in our infrastructure. Try to prefer Europe (or Netherlands) 20 Gbit/s servers to beat the 560 Mbit/s limit you currently experience, which is anyway a good performance in AirVPN if you consult the top user tables. Also open a ticket, as some optimization could help you gain some more performance especially when dealing with torrenting, where external (not depending on the VPN server itself) variables enter into play.

Kind regards
 

[revsplus 8]

23 hours ago, P.Bear said:

And I don’t think I’ve ever hit 100MB/s with AirVPN when NordVPN does.

I almost routinely get 100 MB/s with AirVPN on Dalim (the Netherlands). Right now you can see me as the top 1 user for "speed", 783 Mbit/s.
I connect from a neighboring country and I run WireGuard client on FreeBSD on a fiber line.

[bulk88 0]

On 11/25/2023 at 12:38 PM, P.Bear said:

On large files (100GB for it to last long time), I’m at ~30MB/s with AirVPN, I switch on NordVPN and the speeds goes 104MB/s (after a minute, the time that the peers reconnect). I switch back to AirVPN, after 1, 2 or even 5 minutes, I still cap at ~30MBS.
Sometimes I’m at 70MB/s with AirVPN, I don’t say I'm always stuck at 30 or 40 or 50MB/s. But compared to NordVPN, I’m often below, and on the same torrent.

And I don’t think I’ve ever hit 100MB/s with AirVPN when NordVPN does.

Sounds like a cipher vs CPU issue.  Chacha20 software vs AES hardware native vs AES  in software.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

Guys, it seems you're hijacking this support thread with a discussion about throughput. Please open your own thread if you want to discuss this.

[P.Bear 5]

@revsplus Lucky you. I switched to Dalim to test.
@bulk88 Can you elaborate (in PM or opening another thread to explain).
Is it something to fix on the server side ? On my side I use a unifi UDM with ARM SoC which supports aes :
~# grep -im1 features  /proc/cpuinfo 
Features        : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 cpuid

[Staff 9972]

@mackerel

Hello!

Is the problem solved? If not, please make sure to open a ticket. We have just checked and we don't see any ticket coming from your account.

Kind regards
 

[N8pEtki4 1]

Hello @mackerel


I have read your post and noticed that you have tried all, but changing your DNS.
I did not see it mentioned.

You could try to enter an alternative DNS into Eddie, or via your "network connection"/ NetworkManager. There is a good chance that your ISP's DNS is making trouble for you, though it may not be the problem at all.

If your going to use OpenVPN you could also try using Port 2018,41185  with ether TCP or UDP via the client or through config generator. Both ports 80 and 443

are usually left alone so that another good possible solutions.

Wireguard has 3 different ports. UDP 1637 works well .

Here are some common public alternative DNs servers for you to try if you would like.

Alternate DNS 76.76.19.19 76.223.122.150
Quad9 9.9.9.9 149.112.112.112
OpenDNS Home 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220
Control D 76.76.2.0 76.76.10.0

 

It may also help to be sure to use a different "device/connection" OR aka device-key that AirVPN allows to be created.
You can have up to five.
I would think that this would help get past DPI.

Hope this helps solve your connection issues
Have a good one.