I have a 500Mbps service that consistently hits 450 - 475 when I’m noy using a VPN. I recently subscribed to SS and I’m finding I’m only seeing 180 - 200 Mbps. I’ve created an exception for SS in my AV and tried other servers. The loss of speed hasn’t noticeably affected my use of the internet, and I could always disable it when downloading a large file from a known source, but I’m curious as to how much of a hit I should expect to take.
This is my first go around with a personal VPN. Is it normal to loose about 50% of your download speed when using VPN? Is this more of a SS issue, if so, are there other VPN’s that would get me significantly closer to the speed I’m getting from my provider?
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If you are not using it already, try the Wireguard protocol. I get 340 w/VPN vs 370 without. Under OpenVPN UDP, it drops down to 150.
Be aware though that the Windows app is having an issue currently and the Kill switch needs to be off to connect while using Wireguard. You can re-enable it once connected.
The hit depends on your internet speed and many other factors. Some common sense helps here as well.
More and more people get extremely fast internet connections. 250 MBit are not uncommon for high developed countries. If a provider such as Surfshark has a 1 Gigabit connection, this 1 GBit is shared by all users who are connected to the same server. Means, if 4 user with 250 MBit download at maximum speed, no bandwidth would remain for the other n users. Where n could be anywhere between 5 and 20k or whatever number of users are connected. Only Surfshark knows how many users they have and what server is occupied how much.
I have a 250/100 connection in Switzerland and experience a hit of 10% to 20% depending on time of day, what day of week and so on. When i’m at my second residence in Germany, visiting family and friends, i have a 100/40 MBit connection and experience a hit of approx 5% downstream and zero speed loss upstream.
Fact is, you will always lose speed, because you go through an additional server plus the traffic is encrypted and has to be decrypted, which takes some time as well and therefore slows down everything.
While dropping from 500 to 200 Mbit sounds a lot, it is still crazy fast and nothing to worry about for normal daily use. As you said, for big downloads from trusted sources simply turn off VPN and you are good to go.
Thanks for the reply. Let me ask the question a different way, how much speed should I expect to loose when using a VPN versus not using a VPN, 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%? I’m just wondering if the 50% hit I’m taking is normal. I’m on Win 10 with a highend CPU, so I’d think I should be a lot closer to the speeds I normally see without VPN?
Thanks. When I go into settings I see a warning that “Due to your restrictive network, fewer protocols, are available.” The only ones available are IKEv2 (which I’m on) and OpenVPN(TCP). Is this something I can change or is it a restriction from my ISP?
Edit - I did a bit more testing. By taking my Linksys WiFi router out of the loop and connecting the cable modem directly to my PC I was able to enable WiredGuard. With WireGuard enabled I’m hitting around 400Mbps, so not too much of a fall off. Luckily when I connected the router back into the loop WireGuard remained enabled, and I’m still hitting the 400Mbps speeds.
