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ajsuenb's avatar
ajsuenb
Joining in
11 months ago

Throttling on VPN?

Hi, for a while now I've been having issues with my speed randomly dropping to 10 mbps from around 350. It happens only when I'm connected to my VPN (ProtonVPN) and was wondering if there was any kind of throttling happening?

Two websites I've found that cause this every single time are twitch.tv and decathlon.co.uk, whenever I start to load these websites my speed instantly drops.

Normal speed:

 

When on Twitch:

 

The speed goes back up to normal 15-30 seconds after leaving the websites.

And here's when I start to load decathlon.co.uk too:

I've been in contact with the VPN company and it seems like it isn't on their end, I don't know how long it has been happening for (I guess around a month and a half). I did have my Superhub replaced a few months (?) ago. I've tried in router mode, in modem mode with another router and still have the same issue.

Any idea what's happening?

Thanks.

14 Replies

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  • legacy1's avatar
    legacy1
    Alessandro Volta
    11 months ago

    Its unclear if VM are the problem or the VPN your using try another sever.

    ping is low which would suggest not to be VM and that the VPN is doing QoS/BWM

    • ajsuenb's avatar
      ajsuenb
      Joining in
      11 months ago

      Hi, thanks for the reply. I think that was just a hiccup at that moment, here it is on 3 different UK servers on the VPN, usually the ping is low, just wasn't in those pictures.

       
       

  • Client62's avatar
    Client62
    Alessandro Volta
    11 months ago

    Why are you using a VPN for twitch.tv and decathlon.co.uk ?

    Do twitch.tv and decathlon.co.uk work perfectly without a VPN, 
    i.e. have you established these websites are not the root cause of the problems ?

    • ajsuenb's avatar
      ajsuenb
      Joining in
      11 months ago

      Yes, Twitch and Decathlon work fine without the VPN.

      I was told by ProtonVPN that the issue doesn't seem to be on their end because they couldn't replicate it on their end through testing and it only seems to be on my end so they wanted me to contact Virgin Media to see if there is any kind of network issue happening. 

  • Client62's avatar
    Client62
    Alessandro Volta
    11 months ago

    You already knew that ProtonVPN was the issue. But you rejected ProtonVPN as being the problem.

    The Post Office Horizon project comes to mind !

  • IPFreely's avatar
    IPFreely
    Fibre optic
    11 months ago

    VM have absolutely no idea which websites you are using via the VPN which is presumably the whole point of using it.

  • amihail91's avatar
    amihail91
    Just browsing
    7 months ago

    Hopefully not too old of a bump.

    I was extremely surprised to find a thread that outlined the exact same problem I was experiencing, I was able to narrow it down to browsing Twitch.tv while on ProtonVPN! I don't think the problem is on ProtonVPNs side either, tbh.

    I have tried with a fresh router firmware install and fresh Windows install, with a 3rd party router with Virgin in modem only and Virgin as the full router and I can recreate this behaviour every time. Was there any further information here or was somebody looking into it? I can recreate getting ping spikes of 500ms and speed locked at 1mb/s down ONLY after browsing to Twitch.tv with ProtonVPN on ... after a minute or so after closing the website everything returns to normal, there are other sites that show this exact behaviour also, so we can't say it's a Twitch routing problem or something along those lines.

    • amihail91's avatar
      amihail91
      Just browsing
      7 months ago

      For now I don't have access to one - I will look into it.

  • amihail91's avatar
    amihail91
    Just browsing
    7 months ago

    I'd rather understand the problem and how to potentially fix it than change product/turn this thread into a VPN advertisement. Clearly there is some bug here.

  • legacy1's avatar
    legacy1
    Alessandro Volta
    7 months ago

    Theirs not much to understand you connect to a VPN VM see only a single TCP/UDP session all DNS goes down the tunnel so VM knows nothing sure they can rate limit you but they have no idea when you are going to what site at any given time so if your being rate limited it be by the VPN side

  • amihail91's avatar
    amihail91
    Just browsing
    7 months ago

    A rate limit that kicks in locking the connection down to 1mb/s that is reproduceable seems very odd indeed. I'd have the basis to take a formal complaint to Proton if this is the case - I'll look into it.