Virgin Media + OpenVPN = Fail?

[dIecbasC 38]

that sounds right, I get 121mbps and download at just under 15MB/s......

[Ernst89 11]

Hi nickspam

 

Just making sure I got the numbers right 11MBs(what you get) is almost equivelent to 70-80Mpbs on your Virgin 120Mpbs line right ?

 

120Mpbs should be roughly 14MBs (larger MB)

 

I agree still I would rather have stability and reliability over a poor line.

 

Sorry, I made a mistake. I should have written 11Mb/s. i.e. <1/10 of my non vpn line speed. I did provide links which showed the true numbers.

[Lee47 23]

Sorry its just me getting confused with Mbs and Mbps I think !

 

I ran the same test via speedtest website and got this:

 

 

This was connected to a random air server in amsterdam via airvpn client on an basic 16Mbps broadband provider if I am seeing this right I am getting almost the same download speeds as yourself despite your connection being 10x faster?

 

So clearly Virgin throttling you or a port getting blocked or something else here, if you look at lrj972 who is on the same service as yourself he gets this:

http://www.irj972.co.uk/articles/VPN-performance

 

 

with 120Mbps virgin broadband connected to a uk server I think.

 

If I was you I would try opening ports and try alternative servers or worst comes to worst try alternative VPN providers, its this mystery which really needs further detective work.

[Ernst89 11]

So clearly Virgin throttling you or a port getting blocked or something else here, if you look at lrj972 who is on the same service as yourself he gets this:

http://www.irj972.co.uk/articles/VPN-performance

 

Actually  I don't think VirginMedia are throttling beyond normal internet congestion. 

 

I tried a SLL connection and saw a big improvement in the Speedtest,net result. However whilst the Thinkbroadband test showed a vast improvement in single thread speed it showed no improvement in six thread speed. This indicates to me that AirVPN is limiting the speed of a single thread rather than VirginMedia (which can't look into the VPN tunnel and see how many threads I'm using). Moreover it suggests the Speedtest.net improvements that people report seeing using SLL or SSH connections may be due to the way AirVPN allocates thread bandwidth rather than anything to do with VirginMedia. The AirVPN SSL/SSH connections even go to a different IP address so the load may be different from a normal connection. A tcp SSL/SSH connection also has a disadvantage that it increases latency.

 

I can't explain why  irj972 is getting 112Mb/s, whilst I get lower (I have got higher in the past as shown in a post earlier in this thread). But my real life speeds to the closest servers (Amsterdam) seem to be in line with the 40-60Mb/s commonly seen on the AirVPN top speeds page. I did a multithread download last night and saw myself as top downloader at about 70-80Mb/s. 

 

I would also like to point out that I think AirVPN provides very good value for money and performance is perfectly satisfactory for my needs, this investigation was just due to my autistic curiosity. 

 

I should also point out my VirginMedia connection is very low congestion and I realize that a great many VirginMedia customers are not so lucky.

[Lee47 23]

yeah I don't like these speedtest either seems hit and miss and you may have to run it a few times even.

 

If your getting 70-80Mb/s in real term performance downloads then its more then enough speeds.

 

I would rather loose some speed if it meant to be with Air.

[McLoEa 25]

Hello folks,

I had my speed upgrade to 50Mb/s a few days ago and I'm actually getting a bit more than that from a regular Virgin connection,in the region of 55Mb/s download average.

Using the VPN and there's been a fall off of about another 20% over the speeds i reported getting earlier on in this thread and now I'm lucky if I get to see anything over 10Mb/s no matter what server I connect to although the central European servers can and do still give 15Mb/s on a good day.

Nothing I can't live with but still a little disappointing to see the speeds drop like that.

[Lee47 23]

Hello folks,

 

I had my speed upgrade to 50Mb/s a few days ago and I'm actually getting a bit more than that from a regular Virgin connection,in the region of 55Mb/s download average.

 

Using the VPN and there's been a fall off of about another 20% over the speeds i reported getting earlier on in this thread and now I'm lucky if I get to see anything over 10Mb/s no matter what server I connect to although the central European servers can and do still give 15Mb/s on a good day.

 

Nothing I can't live with but still a little disappointing to see the speeds drop like that.

 

 

Hi thanks for letting us know, yeah it seems similar to what the topic starter suggested after he got his upgrade. I think its hit and miss with this ISP and with Air for now.

[McLoEa 25]

I've been using Air for about a year now and i find there can be a great deal of variation month to month and day to day but overall I feel the benefits make it worthwhile.

[McLoEa 25]

For what it's worth and as an addendum to this thread,

 

today I downloaded a 24GB file over a tunneled connection that gave me a speed test result of 8Mb/s in about 90 minutes,2 hours maybe.

 

The few times I checked to see what speeds the files were coming in at the speed was going up to 4Mb/s so that goes to show that you don't need super Mb/s download speed to get a file quickly I guess the availability of the files has more to do with it than how much bandwidth you're getting.

For me at least that result is something to be reasonably happy about,I don't know about people who are used to an over 100Mb/s connection of course but I don't really download large files like that too often and when I do I think averaging an hour for 10GB or more of download isn't too bad.

I'd be interested to hear what other folk have to say on the subject as well though.

 

Charlie

[Ernst89 11]

Hi McLoEa

 

I think you meant to say that the 24GB download was proceeding at approximately 4 MB/s = 32 Mb/s. Which is more in line with the 90-120 minutes.

[McLoEa 25]

Probably,if your math is more attuned to the fine detail and that does indeed make more sense. (x8)

[Lee47 23]

I still hate and get confused over the Mb and MB thing !

 

Still 24meg in 2 hours is pretty good imo

[rainmakerraw 94]

Woot exactly - I was pretty surprised at just how fast AirVPN was - I was expecting it to be around 40mbps so very pleasantly surprised. Now to the task of building a router than can route 120mbps and has headroom for Virgins increase towards 200mbit later this year.

 

Its interesting to note as well that after tweeting about AirVPN performance my VPS was hit with a DoS attack for the first time since creating it around Christmas time. Coincidence?????

 

Hi,

 

So many options available! I am currently running IPFire, which a hardened Linux distro that turns (old) PCs into a relatively easy-to-use dedicated hardware router/firewalls. The new AMD Kabini A1 chips/boards are really rather powerful and cheap (~£25 CPU, £25 mobo!), so they'd make an ideal little microATX router box with 2GB DDR3 RAM and a small SSD and a wifi card on board. The quad cores only pull 25W TDP which is pretty amazing considering they have an integrated GPU capable of outputting 4k resolution!

 

Or just recycle an older PC (and understand it'll eat more power).

 

I've got IPFire running an an older Pentium system (2.xGHz CPU and 1GB DDR1 RAM) for now, but I plan to build a Kabini A1 system soon. IPFire is easy to configure, and I get my full 152Mbps no problems over ethernet even on that old box. Connected to NL servers on AirVPN I'm seeing between 12MB and 17MB/sec using an Ubuntu 14.04 test torrent which is pretty decent!

[McLoEa 25]

Hey refresh,

 

yes,that's what I was getting at,even with a speedtest result of 8Mb/s that file still came through pretty fast.

[dIecbasC 38]

What services are you guys on, 60 / 120mbit lines? I recall there is different traffic shaping for different packages which may explain some differences we are seeing. 

Also, I had a bout of slow perf (and terrible picture on TV too) I complained and when virgin investigated it turned out to be a lose tap in the local cabinet. Do you see your full bandwidth when not connected to AirVPN?

[McLoEa 25]

I had an upgrade to 50Mb/s a few weeks ago and my tunneled speeds appear to have decreased by a few % since then.

[Lee47 23]

 

Woot exactly - I was pretty surprised at just how fast AirVPN was - I was expecting it to be around 40mbps so very pleasantly surprised. Now to the task of building a router than can route 120mbps and has headroom for Virgins increase towards 200mbit later this year.

 

Its interesting to note as well that after tweeting about AirVPN performance my VPS was hit with a DoS attack for the first time since creating it around Christmas time. Coincidence?????

 

Hi,

 

So many options available! I am currently running IPFire, which a hardened Linux distro that turns (old) PCs into a relatively easy-to-use dedicated hardware router/firewalls. The new AMD Kabini A1 chips/boards are really rather powerful and cheap (~£25 CPU, £25 mobo!), so they'd make an ideal little microATX router box with 2GB DDR3 RAM and a small SSD and a wifi card on board. The quad cores only pull 25W TDP which is pretty amazing considering they have an integrated GPU capable of outputting 4k resolution!

 

Or just recycle an older PC (and understand it'll eat more power).

 

I've got IPFire running an an older Pentium system (2.xGHz CPU and 1GB DDR1 RAM) for now, but I plan to build a Kabini A1 system soon. IPFire is easy to configure, and I get my full 152Mbps no problems over ethernet even on that old box. Connected to NL servers on AirVPN I'm seeing between 12MB and 17MB/sec using an Ubuntu 14.04 test torrent which is pretty decent!

 

pretty impressive but is this under the problematic Virgin broadband ?

[Lee47 23]

Still a mystery regarding the traffic shaping business, which makes little sense since some 120meg virgin owners get full speeds and others not. Also gets weird when you factor in other poorer VPN providers get full bandwith while not air.

[rainmakerraw 94]

 

 

Woot exactly - I was pretty surprised at just how fast AirVPN was - I was expecting it to be around 40mbps so very pleasantly surprised. Now to the task of building a router than can route 120mbps and has headroom for Virgins increase towards 200mbit later this year.

 

Its interesting to note as well that after tweeting about AirVPN performance my VPS was hit with a DoS attack for the first time since creating it around Christmas time. Coincidence?????

 

Hi,

 

So many options available! I am currently running IPFire, which a hardened Linux distro that turns (old) PCs into a relatively easy-to-use dedicated hardware router/firewalls. The new AMD Kabini A1 chips/boards are really rather powerful and cheap (~£25 CPU, £25 mobo!), so they'd make an ideal little microATX router box with 2GB DDR3 RAM and a small SSD and a wifi card on board. The quad cores only pull 25W TDP which is pretty amazing considering they have an integrated GPU capable of outputting 4k resolution!

 

Or just recycle an older PC (and understand it'll eat more power).

 

I've got IPFire running an an older Pentium system (2.xGHz CPU and 1GB DDR1 RAM) for now, but I plan to build a Kabini A1 system soon. IPFire is easy to configure, and I get my full 152Mbps no problems over ethernet even on that old box. Connected to NL servers on AirVPN I'm seeing between 12MB and 17MB/sec using an Ubuntu 14.04 test torrent which is pretty decent!

 

pretty impressive but is this under the problematic Virgin broadband ?

 

Apologies for any delays in my posts showing, I'm still being moderated because I'm new. Yes I have a VM 152Mbps. Security reasons aside (open source router/firewall v underpowered commercial box with backdoors inserted), the main reason I run the IPFire box is because the VM SuperHub 2 (the new one) is awful at handling OpenVPN connections even with the connection being made on the PCs/laptops/etc.

 

With the SH2 enabled as the modem AND router, I was capping out at about 3MB/sec (about 24Mbps on a 152Mbps line!). I pulled my hair out switching Linux distros, playing with iptables firewall rules (and disabling it altogether), trying Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Mac OS X.... even various VPN providers. It's how I ended up at AirVPN from PIA actually! Nothing changed the cap. Then by chance I realised the SH2 was probably just as underpowered and cheap as it is. They cost VM about USD$15 per unit which for a router is just nothing. Once I put it into modem mode and passed the WAN connection direct to my Linux desktop machine (OpenSUSE 13.1 in this case but it rotates through Crunchbang, Debian testing, Mint 13 KDE etc) the issue was no more. An instant 18MB/sec (full speed) without a hiccup. I could have cried, I'd spent weeks pulling out hair and slowly going grey haha

 

The SH2 just can't handle the connections and seems to have a bug when it comes to handling OpenVPN connections. It's important to remember that although VM are poor performers due to over-subscription in a lot of places (high utilisation as they like to call it), they now have NO downstream traffic management at ANY time of day. You can download as much as you want and you'll always get the max speed available to you, with no capping, shaping or throttling. Until I realised it was the SH2 at fault, I was actually convincing myself VM were secretly shaping VPN traffic, but alas not. It's just their rubbish box!

 

So for anyone on VM having issues, get a proper firewall/router made!! I'll write a guide once I'm off the 5 post probation and stick it in the forum wherever is most appropriate.

[Lee47 23]

thanks rainmakerraw very informative post

 

Guess anyone else having issues try Modem only mode to see if it fixes the poor bandwith issues

 

Mcloea and others maybe worth trying this?

 

 

 

[McLoEa 25]

Yes,thanks rainmakerraw,very good info indeed and definitely worth a follow up.

 

I've been considering getting a tomato router for a while now but I think I'll try putting my V1 superhub into modem mode first to see what the results are.

[rainmakerraw 94]

Yes,thanks rainmakerraw,very good info indeed and definitely worth a follow up.

 

I've been considering getting a tomato router for a while now but I think I'll try putting my V1 superhub into modem mode first to see what the results are.

 

Yes, do. You'll likely see a big difference. Just remember though that in modem mode the WAN connection (the internet) is passed directly to the connected computer. Without the router side to act as a natural hardware firewall (due to NAT and the built in SPI firewall), you are wide open to the internet with all its bots, port scanners, script kiddies and whatnot. Just make sure you have a firewall enabled on the machine you're using, whether it's iptables on Linux or Windows firewall on Windows Vista and above (MS made huge improvements in the firewall from Vista onwards).

 

Let us know how you get on.

[McLoEa 25]

Reading the VM blurb and they talk about deep packet inspection which doesn't appear to be too friendly to me so I guess that's another reason to get tomato or ddr-wrt router or some such other non corporate item.

 

Only jumping on and off today so won't get the chance to play about with stuff too much but have to say every time I leave my machine now when it wakes up it automatically disconnects from the Air VPN client,anyone know what that's about?

[Lee47 23]

I get that quite often think its just the way windows is when it goes to sleep or hibernates, I usually switch hibernate and energy saving so don't notice connection issues like that though so many someone more informed could pin point it I chose the lazy mans fix.

 

I would suggest skipping tomato router, no routers on the market really offer any real decent performance for openvpn and are expensive at best and not worth it you won't be able to reach 50Mb speeds either way.

 

With a PC with 2ghz+ even an old one you can try pfsense with Air

 

https://airvpn.org/topic/11245-how-to-set-up-pfsense-21-for-airvpn/page-1

 

If you can get a PC with a cpu with AES even more better since that offloads most work done and you should find you are able to max out your speeds easily with 2ghz+ or a cpu with AES, plenty of info on that thread and with hardware suggestions also it will be handy if you can grab a cheap intel dual or quad nic card from ebay also. I can confirm the above pfsense guide is excellent and working very well it blocks DNS and IP leaks and is rock solid, don't let the guide and all that work discourage you its simply following the steps and well worth the effort to be much more private and secure on the internet.

[McLoEa 25]

Thanks,looks like interesting stuff.