Connection speed drops when connecting to work VPN

[Marv2021]

Hello

I am on Virgin's M200 package with a Hub 3.0 and my PC is hardwired to the Hub.

Speeds and connection are generally fine with little or no deviation from what i would expect. However, when i connect to my offices VPN to access my work domain my connection speed drops from around 200mb to roughly 8 - 12 mb! The speeds over Wi-Fi for other users in my household and not connected to my work VPN remain at 200 mb ish!

If i turn off the work VPN connection my speeds jump straight back to around the 200 mb plus mark.

My office has a leased 1gb line. My work colleagues, using other internet providers connect to the VPN fine with no loss in speed. I know one of my colleagues is also with Virgin and has the same hardwired connection set up as me. She lives in a different town from me (before people ask if it's the same area), she has the Virgin M500 package and experiences similar speed drops / throttling that i do. I assume that the speed throttling issue is to do with Virgins end rather than the office VPN.

Is anyone able to provide any insight into what the issue could be and how to fix or improve the connection speed?

Does Virgin Media throttle VPN connections? Speeds are fine when i am not connected to work!

[Plutonium239]

Hi, 

Not OP, but yes, I do have a wired connection to the router but I am experiencing the same issues.

[Hayley_S]

Hello @Plutonium239,

I am sorry to see this, I was giving this advice to the original author of this post.

I would love to try and help you too though, please can you do the same and post pictures of your speeds with and without the VPN connected? Please use this speedtest here.

Look forward to your response.

[Marv2021]

Hello Hayley

I have only ever had all my work equipment HARDWIRED to the Virgin HUB 3.0 (see my first post), i do not connect via WiFi (although i have tried it with a colleagues lap top to try out and the results were the same i.e. very low speeds when connected to the VPN, no drop when not connected to the VPN).

The speed drop only occurs when i connect to my office's VPN. When i am not directly connected to the VPN the speeds i achieve are as per the package i subscribe to.

My companies IT support team have looked into the issue and it appears that the drastic drop in speed going through the company VPN only affects people that have Virgin as their ISP.

[Hayley_S]

Hello @Marv2021,

I am sorry but we can not really do much about this, you would need to contact your VPN provider to look into why it is causing this drop, as I can see your service with us is fine without the VPN, which indicates that the VPN is the issue here.

I wish I could do more on the matter.

Please let me know how it goes with your VPN provider but there is nothing we can do to resolve this unfortunately.

Many thanks, 

[Marv2021]

It is most definitely a Virgin issue.

My other work colleagues that don't use Virgin as their ISP maintain their speeds (which range from average (around 10-20mbs to 100mbs plus) regardless of being on the company VPN or not.

[Plutonium239 · Accepted solution]

They are ignoring the elphant in the room. It is a Virgin issue. I can prove it. I still have my contract active with Talk talk with a separate router, and connecting the same VPN I don't get speed limitations. They won't aknowledge this, because it is a massive drawback.

[Plutonium239]

Your speed test website does not recognise the router (which is ridiculous) so I did a test with ookla

Without VPN: http://www.speedtest.net/result/11335525739

With VPN: http://www.speedtest.net/result/11335540340

To prove that it is a virgin issue I can make the test with another router as I still have the contract with the other ISP active.

[ToffeeSurprise]

The team managing your company VPN firewall would need to look at packet captures and see if anything strange is going on. I got 100Mbps on my VPN with Virgin Media (max allowed by firewall) so it's not a case of VM breaking all VPNs.

Might be some weird routing to wherever your company firewall is hosted, it would probably go through Liberty Global.

What VPN client are you using? AnyConnect?

I'd do a traceroute to the VPN endpoint, NOT when the VPN is connected and see if there's any weirdness. Hide the destination IP addresses if you post it here!

[Marv2021]

@plutonium239

As daft as it sounds i am glad to see that some else has exactly the same issue that i am experiencing. I wish i had another ISP to directly compare against like you do but alas i don't.

Your throttled speed (as a percentage of your paid for speed) when connected to your VPN seems much better than what i can achieve. some days i get sub 1mbs when i should be 220mbs! Nothing for it at the point but to hard rest the HUB 3.0 and let it go through the process of sorting itself out. Once it's stable again i normally go back to around 10mbs.

BT have just finished running full fibre in my area so will look into moving to them i think to improve my speed over the VPN. Given that i now mostly home work the VPN speed is as important to me as just casual internet for personal used to be.  

[mjpartyboy]

Interesting. I've never noticed any throttling going on when connected to my work's VPN from home on our VM 200/20 service, but out of curiosity I'll check it when I next work from home.