Virgin Media + OpenVPN = Fail?

[Jumping 1]

The router that Virgin provides is pretty poor I have the Superhub1 but I have put it in modem mode and I'm using an Asus rt-n66u to do the actual routing.

 

It is a bit weird and I think the only way to find out whats going on is to try out some other VPN providers preferably one that allows different protocols so I can if the problem lies with OpenVPN being on some weird traffic shaping from Virgin or if its something else.

[McLoEa 25]

I have a Virgin 30MB connection and find that if I log on to Open/Air VPN through a German or Dutch server using port 443 UDP then I suffer no loss of speed and I get my full 30MB's.

If I use 443 TCP I can expect to lose about 33%-50% of my 30MB's and my download speed will be about 15-20MB's.

When using American servers you can add up to another 50% loss of speed so getting anything over 12-15MB from an American server is good,I find the servers in Virginia to provide the best performance.

Other server locations including European ones are all very much hit and miss and on a day to day basis and a connection that gives 20MB's on one day may only return 2-3MB's the next.

I find you have to sniff about a bit for the best server on any given day if you like to swop your connection location around but if you are only using light traffic it's no problem to connect to  a lower speed server anyway.
If you are expecting to be streaming video or downloading larger file sizes you can pretty much guarantee good speeds from the main European server locations,at least up to 30MB's anyway.

I am expecting an upgrade to 50MB's soon though so hopefully that will not impinge on the quality of service I have received so far.

[urbanconcrete 14]

If you want to test your speed, you could try http://www.neubot.org/download . You could stay connected to AirVPN for a day (or more) and look up the log to see if there is a change in down- or upload speed.

The program is testing frequently different protocols like bittorrent, raw, speedtest and dashtest.

[Lee47 23]

thx will bookmark that looks handy

[Lee47 23]

I have a Virgin 30MB connection and find that if I log on to Open/Air VPN through a German or Dutch server using port 443 UDP then I suffer no loss of speed and I get my full 30MB's.

 

If I use 443 TCP I can expect to lose about 33%-50% of my 30MB's and my download speed will be about 15-20MB's.

 

When using American servers you can add up to another 50% loss of speed so getting anything over 12-15MB from an American server is good,I find the servers in Virginia to provide the best performance.

 

Other server locations including European ones are all very much hit and miss and on a day to day basis and a connection that gives 20MB's on one day may only return 2-3MB's the next.

 

I find you have to sniff about a bit for the best server on any given day if you like to swop your connection location around but if you are only using light traffic it's no problem to connect to  a lower speed server anyway.

If you are expecting to be streaming video or downloading larger file sizes you can pretty much guarantee good speeds from the main European server locations,at least up to 30MB's anyway.

 

I am expecting an upgrade to 50MB's soon though so hopefully that will not impinge on the quality of service I have received so far.

 

thanks much appreciated you may have got some work arounds going !

 

can I ask do you get consistant and reliable speeds on that german server on a day to day basis though ?

 

would be great to hear back if you get consistant speeds with your 50meg upgrade.

[dIecbasC 38]

hey guys, Ive just landed here and noticed this thread, Im on virgins 100mbit service and receive 120mbps without VPN, with Airvpn enabled I am seeing 100mbit+ speeds even during traffic shaping hours. Im currently putting together some info which I'll loop back round with once its complete. 

[McLoEa 25]

Hi refresh,

yes mate,I always get at least 20MB's from a German or Dutch server,I think there are T1 hubs in those locations and that could help but I may be talking out of my butt too.

I tried the Romanian server as I hear that country has particularly good internet speeds but I can never get good speeds from there.

Another thing to consider if you're only getting low speeds is have you forwarded a port because that helps tons.

[dIecbasC 38]

Ive just updated my blog with speed data & speediest results, http://www.irj972.co.uk/articles/VPN-performance

 

For the sake of sharing info here though via AirVPN last night at about 9PM GMT on a Saturday evening I had a 120mbps connection pulling some test data down at 14MB/s.

 

This was from my Macbook pro over wifi to my airport extreme and connected via viscosity software having imported a standard connection - no tweaking tuning, port forwarding, SLL, SSH etc. 

 

It was so quick I didn't even bother benching any other providers. I like AirVPNs philosophy so happy to support them etc. 

[McLoEa 25]

I'd say try port forwarding the result can be very surprising and I would guess that's where your other 100MB's are waiting.

[Lee47 23]

thanks McLoEa

 

that is great to hear you get 20mbs on the german/dutch servers that could be quite important regarding the port forwarding thing.

[Lee47 23]

Ive just updated my blog with speed data & speediest results, http://www.irj972.co.uk/articles/VPN-performance

 

For the sake of sharing info here though via AirVPN last night at about 9PM GMT on a Saturday evening I had a 120mbps connection pulling some test data down at 14MB/s.

 

This was from my Macbook pro over wifi to my airport extreme and connected via viscosity software having imported a standard connection - no tweaking tuning, port forwarding, SLL, SSH etc. 

 

It was so quick I didn't even bother benching any other providers. I like AirVPNs philosophy so happy to support them etc. 

 

am confused did you not say earlier you got 100meg with air switched on and now 14mbs?

 

Otherwise that is a major loss of speed and performance I would say try port forwarding also.

 

also the link returns bad gateway error

[dIecbasC 38]

thanks for letting me know my VPS has thrown a wobbler....

 

for clarification whilst I fix my VPS, I connected at 120mbps (mebagits per second) on Virgin last night and downloaded an 8Gb test file at 14MB/s (megabytes per second) - the capitals are important

[dIecbasC 38]

sigh.....sorry about that, looks like I was hit by my first server attack which crashed my VPS. I'll look at how to make it more resilient this week. Hopefully the bots will leave it alone for a while....

[McLoEa 25]

I couldn't access your link yesterday either lrj972 but today it's showing download speeds of 111.82Mb/s with AirVPN engaged in which case I'll say Woot!!

To refresh,

I grabbed a 12GB file over a 20Mb/s connection in an hour last week and my client was showing download speeds of 4Mb/s which surpasses the previous best I had of 3.7Mb/s.

Although it would be nice to have instantaneous downloads ,i.e. click it and it's there, I can remember when it took 18 hours to get a 1GB file over a Virgin connection.That's going back a fair while now and I'm generally satisfied with the speeds I get today and allowing for a 33% decrease for having a VPN engaged is not a worry for me. Oh the excitement when my first download  completed at over 1Mb/s!

I guess when I go to 50Mb/s supposedly at the end of this month I'll be even happier.

[dIecbasC 38]

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?????

[Lee47 23]

I need to work out my megabytes from my megabits otherwise this gets confusing !

 

McLoea that is good to hear regarding the speeds, I am glad to hear you will be getting the 50meg update I would be interested to hear how the speed is after this update while under air

 

lrj972: link is working now its great to see you can make full use of the bandwith under air and with no tweeks, but it does also confuse why some air customers under virgin get a major hit or unusable service and a few don't. Could be that port forwarding businesss still.

[McLoEa 25]

I think I should post a ps to this thread.

 

I use speedtest.net for my  results and I generally check 2 or 3 times.

The speeds I mentioned in this thread are all the fastest speeds I get after a few checks.

 

[Lee47 23]

A pic would be great, did you also check actual real speeds during torrents or downloads?

 

Someone one page 1 suggested speedtest is inaccurate on virgin bb testing

[McLoEa 25]

that's right now on port 443 UDP Germany

[Lee47 23]

awesome look forward to the 50meg speedtest in 2-3 weeks time ?

[Ernst89 11]

AirVPN has slowed for me from the 120Mb/s I posted 6 months ago. So not  a 50Mb/s but hopefully interesting none the less.

 

I won't claim to be an expert but the thinkboardband test suggests to me that there is a significant contention for bandwidth on the AirVPN server. Possibly there is a VirginMedia problem too but I can't think of a test to spot that.

 

 

 

Obviously I would like it to run at 120Mb/s but I think that is a little bit too much to expect for the money. For me it has always been above the 4 Mb/s that AirVPN promise. Connection quality is more important for me than raw speed.

[McLoEa 25]

Here's a link to aGoogle+ hangout with Vint Cerf,

link not being allowed it seems but a quick youtube search for Vint Cerf and google hang outs should take you there

he's the guy we have to thank for the IP/TCP protocols and he talks about the IPv4 that I would imagine the majority of people here are still on as being the beta model of the internet and that IPv6 is the real thing.

Worth a watch.

[Lee47 23]

AirVPN has slowed for me from the 120Mb/s I posted 6 months ago. So not  a 50Mb/s but hopefully interesting none the less.

 

I won't claim to be an expert but the thinkboardband test suggests to me that there is a significant contention for bandwidth on the AirVPN server. Possibly there is a VirginMedia problem too but I can't think of a test to spot that.

 

 

 

Obviously I would like it to run at 120Mb/s but I think that is a little bit too much to expect for the money. For me it has always been above the 4 Mb/s that AirVPN promise. Connection quality is more important for me than raw speed.

 

Did you try port 443 UDP with Germany server ?

[Ernst89 11]

 

Port 443 UDP with German (Frankfurt).

 

11 MB/s With speedtest

 

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3434256417

 

My connection has definitely slowed from six months ago. I really don't know why. Its ok at the moment but I would be very unhappy if it was Virgin shaping OpenVPN.

 

If AirVPN staff are reading I want to make clear the speed is still OK at the moment and I value line quality, jitter/packet loss/consistency etc, over raw speed. Quality is also ok at  the moment.

 

Without VPN speedtest.net gave a solid 126Mb/s to the same Frankfurt speedtest.net (leaseweb) server. 

[Lee47 23]

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.