5 ms·

I recently bought a year for around $35 with some coupon code or other and honestly...I'm a bit underwhelmed. No matter what settings I use or what node I conn

I recently bought a year for around $35 with some coupon code or other and honestly...I'm a bit underwhelmed. No matter what settings I use or what node I connect to, my ~100mbps (down) cable connection drops to somewhere between 1-10mbps. I was originally going to set up OpenVPN on my router so everything would go through it but I heard it can tax router hardware and lead to slower speeds so I figured I'd just test the desktop client first. Now I'm glad I didn't go mucking around with my router setup since it would have led to house-wide issues. As it stands, I can handle the slower speeds when torrenting some TV episode I missed but after that, I usually need to turn it off.

tomjen3 11y ago
I am a very happy user, in fact I am writing this behind their vpn. In my experience you are right for some endpoints, some of the time, but I haven't had any issue with the one I am currently using (NL based).
celticninja 11y ago
try out cryptostorm.is i have ad zero issues with them and have been running it for the last few months (>3 <6)
rev_bird 11y ago
That's the same issue I ran into with using a VPN; I know I want to be using one as a (theoretical) enhancement to my privacy, but it was just too slow.
- dmix 11y ago
  Really? Have you tried getting a server in your own city? I hardly notice the difference when my VPN is connected.
pyre 11y ago
One possibility is that your ISP is throttling encrypted connections. It's something that seems easy enough to test.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Yeah, I've considered that. Outside of choosing different ports or switching from TCP<>UDP or vice versa, is there really any way to address this?
joshstrange 11y ago
I have a 50Mbps connection and don't actively notice the speed drop but speed tests (which are not that reliable and I didn't do enough tests to really confirm) show about a 10Mbps difference (slower on VPN). My phone connection is never anywhere near that fast so I really don't notice it there. I'm sure that fast home connections will have more issues (as in being slower) but I'm willing to take the hit (as long as it's only about 1/5 penalty as it appears to be now for me) for the gain. I've tried running my own VPN but every time I run into some odd issues or it doesn't work on all my devices. PIA's offerings are well worth $40/yr IMHO but I understand that that would be the same for everyone.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  Yeah, I expected some latency and lower bandwidth due to the extra hops and their capacity but going from 100 to 5 is a bit much. I'm still guessing it's either something I need to set up differently or it's Comcast somehow throttling it but I've tried both TCP and UDP set to auto and to each of the other choices they give you. I've tried connecting to the closest server and to others. And if I do the speedtests on their site (testing the speed of their connections) they seem to be as fast as you would expect. Just not quite sure what to try next. I'm only out $35 and on the rare occasions where I really need to use it (occasional TV show torrenting), I have no complaints about longer waits since I'm not paying for them. At this point it's mostly just bugging me that I haven't found a solution.
  - joshstrange 11y ago
    Yeah, 100->5 is terrible. I'm on Time Warner (not sure how much that matters but wanted to throw out a data point at a minimum) and 50->40 is fine for most things. I'd be interested to try downloading from usenet and see what speeds you get (to see if encrypted connections are being throttled) as I regularly can get 5.0-6.5MBps (Notice capital "B").
deanclatworthy 11y ago
Same. I have been a customer for almost two years now, but recently the UK servers have been so slow I can't even stream iPlayer in HD anymore. I contacted their customer service about the issue a few months ago and they said they were aware of capacity issues, but it's only gotten worse. It seems users have also realised and quickly moved from London > Southampton server and overwhelmed that one also (which always served me well when London was slow).
blacksmith_tb 11y ago
Hmm, depending on the exit, on my 100/25mbps connection I tend to get about 30/10 from PIA. It isn't perfect, but it's an acceptable tradeoff for me, and I don't run all my machines through it all the time

tomjen3 11y ago

I am a very happy user, in fact I am writing this behind their vpn. In my experience you are right for some endpoints, some of the time, but I haven't had any issue with the one I am currently using (NL based).

celticninja 11y ago

try out cryptostorm.is i have ad zero issues with them and have been running it for the last few months (>3 <6)

rev_bird 11y ago

That's the same issue I ran into with using a VPN; I know I want to be using one as a (theoretical) enhancement to my privacy, but it was just too slow.

dmix 11y ago
Really? Have you tried getting a server in your own city? I hardly notice the difference when my VPN is connected.

pyre 11y ago

One possibility is that your ISP is throttling encrypted connections. It's something that seems easy enough to test.

soylentcola 11y ago
Yeah, I've considered that. Outside of choosing different ports or switching from TCP<>UDP or vice versa, is there really any way to address this?

joshstrange 11y ago

I have a 50Mbps connection and don't actively notice the speed drop but speed tests (which are not that reliable and I didn't do enough tests to really confirm) show about a 10Mbps difference (slower on VPN). My phone connection is never anywhere near that fast so I really don't notice it there. I'm sure that fast home connections will have more issues (as in being slower) but I'm willing to take the hit (as long as it's only about 1/5 penalty as it appears to be now for me) for the gain. I've tried running my own VPN but every time I run into some odd issues or it doesn't work on all my devices. PIA's offerings are well worth $40/yr IMHO but I understand that that would be the same for everyone.

soylentcola 11y ago
Yeah, I expected some latency and lower bandwidth due to the extra hops and their capacity but going from 100 to 5 is a bit much. I'm still guessing it's either something I need to set up differently or it's Comcast somehow throttling it but I've tried both TCP and UDP set to auto and to each of the other choices they give you. I've tried connecting to the closest server and to others. And if I do the speedtests on their site (testing the speed of their connections) they seem to be as fast as you would expect. Just not quite sure what to try next. I'm only out $35 and on the rare occasions where I really need to use it (occasional TV show torrenting), I have no complaints about longer waits since I'm not paying for them. At this point it's mostly just bugging me that I haven't found a solution.
- joshstrange 11y ago
  Yeah, 100->5 is terrible. I'm on Time Warner (not sure how much that matters but wanted to throw out a data point at a minimum) and 50->40 is fine for most things. I'd be interested to try downloading from usenet and see what speeds you get (to see if encrypted connections are being throttled) as I regularly can get 5.0-6.5MBps (Notice capital "B").

deanclatworthy 11y ago

Same. I have been a customer for almost two years now, but recently the UK servers have been so slow I can't even stream iPlayer in HD anymore. I contacted their customer service about the issue a few months ago and they said they were aware of capacity issues, but it's only gotten worse. It seems users have also realised and quickly moved from London > Southampton server and overwhelmed that one also (which always served me well when London was slow).

blacksmith_tb 11y ago

Hmm, depending on the exit, on my 100/25mbps connection I tend to get about 30/10 from PIA. It isn't perfect, but it's an acceptable tradeoff for me, and I don't run all my machines through it all the time