Painfully slow speeds to Sweden

bornintothisbornintothis
in Feedback
Hi. I purchased a plan 1 month ago and got around 9-10mbit to Sweden which was perfect for my streaming needs. I'm on the west coast in the US. This made me sign up to the service and switch from another provider.

Lately, it's been incredibly slow. I'm streaming TV on an apple tv and the quality is basically 20 mega pixels on the screen..

I've tried fast.com from a router (merlin-wrt) configuration and a tunnelblick configuration. I'm getting around 2mbit for both. Sometimes it won't even make it to 1.

I read in some other thread that there has been some congestion in the nordic countries. Is that something you're working on or is it simply a reality? I still have a month left on my previous provider and they're at least consistently pushing 5-6mbit. Would hate to switch once again. Thanks for reading.



Comments

  • OpenVPNOpenVPN
    @Max-P, Can you please have the network team take a closer look at this issue? Speeds on the Swedish server on terrible.
  • Max-PMax-P
    Pulling in a solid 180 Mbps from Sweden to my server right now.

    @bornintothis Did you notice this issue at any time in particular or does it persists throughout the day? If it's still slow for you it might end up being a routing issue.

    Also, when trying with Tunnelblick, have you made sure to disable the VPN on the router to avoid doing double-VPN and being restricted by the speed of the router?

    Have you looked at the router itself, and in particular if it's particularly hot to the touch?
  • bornintothisbornintothis
    @Max-P thanks for writing back!

    Today I'm getting around 3 Mbps to Sweden with PIA. Tried both wireless and wired, tunnelblick or through the router and it's about the same in all configurations. Not a double-VPN issue. When I try a local server (silicon valley) I get 60+ Mbps through wired and tunnelblick. Basically my full ISP speed which is great. When I try the local server through my router I get about 40 Mbps which I think is the max speed my router can handle with openVPN.

    It's simply just slow to Sweden for me with PIA... today when I switched between PIA and another provider (also swedish server) I get very different speeds.

    PIA:


    The other provider:



    Both tested with tunnelblick wireless.
  • Max-PMax-P
    @bornintothis Can you try doing a speed test directly to PIA's server WITH and WITHOUT the VPN connected to Silicon Valley? http://sweden.privateinternetaccess.com:8888/speedtest/

    Given that you are in the US, the path to Sweden is probably not that great especially if your ISP doesn't have very good peering with the outside of the US. This can severely affect the VPN performance. We highly recommend using local gateways whenever possible to avoid this kind of issues. If in the above test, the speeds to Sweden over PIA are faster than with your ISP then you have your answer :)
  • bornintothisbornintothis
    Thanks again @Max-P

    You mean connecting to VPN through a local PIA server? How do you set that up? I'm on Merlin WRT.

    These are the results I got on WIFI with Tunnelblick. Better results today I believe!

    WITH PIA (Silicon valley)


    WITH PIA (SWEDEN)


    WITHOUT PIA. JUST ISP.



    Does this tell you something? 

    Thanks again!

  • bornintothisbornintothis
    I did a traceroute for both the sweden vpn and the silicon valley vpn.

    Silicon valley: 7 hops
    Sweden: 10 hops

    Not sure if that helps you :) 
  • Max-PMax-P
    It does seem like this is a slowdown from within the US. I'm currently in San Francisco and also have relatively slow speeds to Sweden (25-30 Mbps) but if I remote at home in Canada, it immediately jumps to 150 Mbps+ and continues raising. It's as slow in SF with as without PIA.

    Can you try connecting to CA Montreal and speed test to sweden to confirm this?
  • bornintothisbornintothis
    Interesting...Even faster than ISP directly. So is there any way I can make us of this? I would still need the swedish IP for the shows to play in my apple tv.

    Thanks @Max-P !

  • bornintothisbornintothis
    @Max-P any idea on how to take advantage of this? is it possible to route the connection via canada or something?
  • Max-PMax-P
    Hi @bornintothis,

    Sorry for the delays, I was travelling last time I replied here and missed your update!

    This is unfortunately a fairly tricky process. I can stack VPNs just fine on Linux but it's not working with Tunnelblick or the app.

    You said it's for your Apple TV however. So I'm assuming you normally use a router-based setup? If so, which firmware does your router run? Since those tends to run on Linux, we might be able to pull that off manually. One problem I can see coming with that setup however is that you'll get the VPN overhead twice, and routers already are kind of limited in processing power so your speeds may very much go down enough that it outweights the gains...
  • bornintothisbornintothis
    Got an asus 68u running merlin wrt
  • Max-PMax-P
    bornintothis said:
    Got an asus 68u running merlin wrt
    Awww, that's one of the two I don't have the physical hardware for it nor have any way of emulating it either :/
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