Question Burst speeds when downloading and slow uploads on Mulvad VPN - FTTH connection

[fpga123]

I am a solutions architect in the software industry with a background of IoT, desktop and web development.

• Censored country with DPI and firewalls
• VPNs are not blocked but might get affected
• 20 Mbps FTTH connection
• Bursting direct downloads and uploads, same with torrents and browsing on 5GHz Wi-Fi
• Previous experience with Ethernet is robust with torrents and browsing while direct up/down suffers
• Router far away and below one floor. No line of sight. Booster in between.
• Bursting makes it so that only 200-600 KBps speeds are measured on average in task manager.

Please guide me about what the issue is, is it the router being too far away?
Should I test with Ethernet before upgrading? What tools can be used for this.?
Should I instead have my own connection with Ethernet deployed in my room? Considering it will be more than 100 feet of not so good CAT 5/6 Ethernet cable from the router.

System Specs: AMD 5900X, 32GB RAM, Nvidia 3700Ti, Gigabyte X570 Aorus mainboard, 512GB NVMe SSD, 3x 4TB parity HDDs, 1x 3TB HDD, Windows 10 x64 Pro.

 

[bill001g]

20mbps is very slow for a fiber connection but if that is all you pay for it is usable.

600kbps is crazy slow for modern stuff. Even web browsing is going to be slow.

So the first step is always test with ethernet to make sure the router and internet connection really give you what you pay for. Many times you just temporary move your pc close to the router an use a short ethernet cable.

If those are fine then you evaluation your options. I am surprised even wifi is that bad in your house. Most people come here are and complain the wifi is only 30mbps or something. That would be faster than your internet connection.

So ethernet is always the best. It depends on how hard it is to run a cable to your room. 100ft is not a issue ethernet can go 100 meters. More the problem is how fo you get the cable run. 100ft in a big open room is easy when you have walls and floors in the way it is not so simple at times. The quick and dirtly way a ISP does it is to drill through the outside walls of the house and run the wire on the side of the house. You would need to protect the wire from sunlight but simple house paint is good for that, you need special wire if it touches the ground.

After that you have 2 options for a kinda wired connection. If you have coax cables in both rooms you can use MoCA adapters. These most times can run full gigabit speed and they make models that claim 2.5g. If you do not have coax consider powerline networks. These can be a bit "slow". Even the ones that have 1000/2000 number on them only get about 130mbps in most houses. This is still massively above the 20mbps internet you have.

If you have no other option..and I really mean you have considered all other things...you can look at a repeater. You would place a repeater 1/2 between the router and your room. This greatly decreases the speed but in your case it will not matter much since your internet is so slow so if you only got a wifi speed of 30mbps it would still max out your internet.

 

[fpga123]

20mbps is very slow for a fiber connection but if that is all you pay for it is usable.

600kbps is crazy slow for modern stuff. Even web browsing is going to be slow.

So the first step is always test with ethernet to make sure the router and internet connection really give you what you pay for. Many times you just temporary move your pc close to the router an use a short ethernet cable.

If those are fine then you evaluation your options. I am surprised even wifi is that bad in your house. Most people come here are and complain the wifi is only 30mbps or something. That would be faster than your internet connection.

So ethernet is always the best. It depends on how hard it is to run a cable to your room. 100ft is not a issue ethernet can go 100 meters. More the problem is how fo you get the cable run. 100ft in a big open room is easy when you have walls and floors in the way it is not so simple at times. The quick and dirtly way a ISP does it is to drill through the outside walls of the house and run the wire on the side of the house. You would need to protect the wire from sunlight but simple house paint is good for that, you need special wire if it touches the ground.

After that you have 2 options for a kinda wired connection. If you have coax cables in both rooms you can use MoCA adapters. These most times can run full gigabit speed and they make models that claim 2.5g. If you do not have coax consider powerline networks. These can be a bit "slow". Even the ones that have 1000/2000 number on them only get about 130mbps in most houses. This is still massively above the 20mbps internet you have.

If you have no other option..and I really mean you have considered all other things...you can look at a repeater. You would place a repeater 1/2 between the router and your room. This greatly decreases the speed but in your case it will not matter much since your internet is so slow so if you only got a wifi speed of 30mbps it would still max out your internet.

Haha, thanks for the insights.

Yeah max I can get on the connection is 300Mbps which is crazy expensive (~ USD 66/month) but I was shooting for 50Mbps.

As I had described I do have a repeater in between (I called it booster). The thing is the problem only manifests with the VPN which essentially is always on as a lot is censored. Plain internet works fine, well there is nothing much that it can work in the first place.

I have just moved towns, it was ethernet network in the previous place and it was only bad for direct downloads, everything else was fine. Same ISP too.

 

[bill001g]

The key thing about vpn is it appears to be the same as web traffic to every device in the network....at least modern vpn work that way.

So a HTTPS web page say watching youtube would appear the same as a VPN download files.

This pretty much means the problem is either in vpn server site or there is something about the software that is slowing things down. There is actually a lot of overhead encrypting data but it should not be of the massive amount you see. The overhead is much more obvious on say a gigabit internet connection because the cpu must encrypt much more data.