Too many clients, same bandwidth = poor performance

[tranquivox69 36]

I've been a happy customer for a long time now. And I have a long time commitment to AirVPN too, with my plan not expiring for four more years.

In the past few months the situation with servers load has gone from bad to worse. It's become noticeable in all applications. P2P above else, where I have a pretty firm idea of what the performance can be.

This is my current performance under AirVPN.



This is my current performance outside the tunnel.



Before the recent influx of new users the situation was far better. Sad state of affairs and I'd like to understand if AirVPN is planning to so something to remedy the situation or if I have to look elsewhere in order to properly use my connection.

Thank you. Even though the message might not sound like it, I'm a big fan of AirVPN and of their overall mission.

[tranquivox69 36]

From further experiments I suspect it's not only a matter of bandwidth but probably a matter of hardware in the servers supporting too many users (CPU speed, RAM, I don't know).

This is currently on Alrai, with 62% bandwidth load and 102 users.



This is Dalim with 18% bandwidth load and 263 users.



It's actually in line with the "score system", as Alrai was the recommended server.

The problem I see with the current situation is not that I cannot select a "good" server at any given time. Problem is it's rather quick for the situation to change and the server becoming bad, with performance being stuck as bad for however long it takes for the connection to be switched (the logic of which still eludes me in Eddie, but that's surely my bad).

 

[Staff 10051]

25 minutes ago, tranquivox69 said:

From further experiments I suspect it's not only a matter of bandwidth but probably a matter of hardware in the servers supporting too many users (CPU speed, RAM, I don't know).

This is currently on Alrai

Hello!

Do you experience this problem on Netherlands servers only (but please test the 10 Gbit/s ones too, Dalim, Menkent and Piautos in the NL), or on other European countries as well?

Kind regards
 

[tranquivox69 36]

Same thing with nperf

Dalim at 13% bandwidth load with 265 users



Merga at 62% bandwidth load and 110 users



And my native connection



I'm using Chrome as I can't have nperf working in Firefox, sadly.

[tranquivox69 36]

3 minutes ago, Staff said:

Do you experience this problem on Netherlands servers only (but please test the 10 Gbit/s ones too, Dalim, Menkent and Piautos in the NL), or on other European countries as well?

See above with further results on Dalim and Merga. Yes, I use Netherlands servers because they've always provided me with the best performance. And by "always" I mean during the 10 years experience I have with your service.

[matts9 10]

I have similar experience with the 10G servers. I ran some tests today (Windows 11, WireGuard[MTU=1320]):
Caph 1G (65% load)
Dalim 10G (17% load)
Menkent 10G (17% load)
Piautos 10G (29% load)

To rule out routing problem I have run traceroute to all four servers and the difference is only visible in last two hops (inside global layer network which is understandable).
Caph:


Dalim:


Menkent:


Piautos:


Caph:


Dalim:


Menkent:


Piautos:


Out of the three 10G servers only Piautos gives me good speeds. Interestingly at the moment of testing Piautos had higher load than the other two (29% vs 17%). Looks like both Dalim and Menkent are running into some bottleneck/limit (hardware, network, connections?).
My experience so far is that 1G servers - even the ones at 60-80% load score better in speed tests and the browsing feels smoother.
Though I only have 1/10th of OP internet speed (200/100Mbit) so I never thought of 1G/10G server limits and just connect to 1G ones  

[AG999 9]

Baseline, without any tunnels:
 

All tests were done with Wireguard and 1400 MTU.

10 Gb/s servers in Netherlands:
Menkent, 18% load, 213 users:


Piautos, 25% load, 198 users:


Dalim, 20% load, 245 users:


Other EU servers:
Switzerland, 10 Gb/s, Alpherg - 21% load, 287 users:


Norway, 1 Gb/s, Ophiuchus, 77% load, 103 users:


Estonia, 1 Gb/s (or is it more?), Alruba, 82% load, 79 users:



Download speeds seem to be mostly okay-ish on all servers, but something is up with the upload speed. Not sure what causes it to drop significantly.
Will say that we definitely need more 10 Gb/s servers.

I think you should try using servers in other EU countries as well.
Server in Estonia is interesting, because it seems to always give me good download speed, even when it's loaded to 100%.
Old screenshot from it:


 

[tranquivox69 36]

It appears to be all a bit of a mystery, to be honest. What I'm sure of is that the situation worsened with the recent influx of new users.

[Staff 10051]

@tranquivox69

Hello!

We will investigate the issue you reported and we confirm that the expansion of the infrastructure proceeds exactly at the required pace as usual. We have recently completed in the USA the switch to all 10 Gbit/s dedicated lines in every strategic area and expansion in Europe has been remarkable in the last 2 years. Even Oceania and Asia have all seen remarkable expansions in the last 2 years.

We do not have doubts that your experience worsened and that will be a matter of investigation of course, but please note that saying "too many clients same bandwidth" is unfair. In April 2022, we provided in Europe 175000 Mbit/s, with a real required throughput of 37000 Mbit/s. The average connected clients at any given time were 8000-8500: https://web.archive.org/web/20220317052230/https://airvpn.org/status/

Today, we provide 446000 Mbit/s to about 18000 clients connected to Europe servers at any given time:
https://airvpn.org/status
with a real / required throughput of 190000 Mbit/s.

So, in 2022 the average real provided throughput was 4.6 Mbit/s per connection, while today it is 10.6 Mbit/s.

Even the required throughput top peaks of users sky rocketed. In 2022 they were around 400 Mbit/s, today between 800 Mbit/s and 2 Gbit/s.

All of the above not to say that we will be slowing the infrastructure expansion, but just to reassure you that the expansion has continued and is continuing at a fast pace according to needs. If any country is unbalanced within Europe we will of course fix the situation.

Kind regards
 

[tranquivox69 36]

On 1/18/2025 at 1:18 PM, Staff said:

All of the above not to say that we will be slowing the infrastructure expansion, but just to reassure you that the expansion has continued and is continuing at a fast pace according to needs. If any country is unbalanced within Europe we will of course fix the situation.

Thank you for this message. I did not want to be unfair toward your company. I've been nothing but satisfied with the service you provide in these 10 years. If I sounded too harsh (re-reading myself I think I did), sorry.

Since I asked a question in the OP, you've now provided the answer I hoped to get with the above. Now I'll wait and you surely have earned the goodwill for that in these 10 years.

Thanks again.