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Possible ISP throttling?

T

THRESHIN

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 29, 2002
Messages
3,929
This is a good one for you networking gurus. Networking is not my strongest suit but I'm not a complete idiot with it by any means.

Here's the deal. I have a 40MB cable connection (yes 40, meaning up upgrade soon) and I use a VPN some of the time. I'm using torguard currently. I have several systems in the home, my desktop which is windows 11 connected by Ethernet cable to my router. my laptop and phone are connected by Wi-Fi as expected.

During certain hours and only while connected to my VPN service, my connection speed drops to anywhere between 5-20 mb. upload is around 1mb, should be 10. The weird part is this only applies to the desktop. I'd say it's the ISP throttling but why not my other systems?

I'm going over this with torguard support but so far they're about as helpful as a sack of hammers.

This seems to only occur between the hours of 2pm to 2am. Might be a little off on the time but close enough.

Turn off the VPN and all is fine. Is it possible they're throttling my desktop? Possibly by MAC address of the NIC? I'm at a loss here.

Tried resetting TCP/IP, reinstalled torguard software, reinstalled NIC. The usual steps. Router is an Asus AX92-U. Older model but just upgraded the firmware last night.

Any thoughts are welcome.

EDIT: forgot to mention, also tried to disable wifi on the laptop and plugged the same ethernet cable from the desktop into the laptop. speed was fine on the laptop.
 
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have you tried a different VPN service?
have you tried your current VPN on a different computer?
 
A couple of questions:
  • Is VPN client on the router or the device?
  • If it is by device, is the desktop the only device with this speed issue?
 
SamirD said:
A couple of questions:
  • Is VPN client on the router or the device?
  • If it is by device, is the desktop the only device with this speed issue?
Click to expand...
he mentions when he turns off the VPN, the speeds are fine
 
Zepher said:
have you tried a different VPN service?
have you tried your current VPN on a different computer?
Click to expand...
Have not yet tried a different VPN. I use this VPN service on my phone and laptop without issue as stated in my post.
 
SamirD said:
A couple of questions:
  • Is VPN client on the router or the device?
  • If it is by device, is the desktop the only device with this speed issue?
Click to expand...
VPN is on the device using the provided software, also up to date. Same goes for phone and laptop.
 
pendragon1 said:
have you asked your isp?
Click to expand...
Officially they do not, but I would expect them to lie about it. Its a good point, but the issue is political. I live in Canada where we have a government body that oversees telecoms to some extent. They're not happy with ISP throttling so they all claim no, but yet some still do with deep packet inspection so it's a little harder to figure out. idea is they can't inspect an encrypted packet so it gets throttled.

This is why I'm wondering if it's even possible to throttle a particular system from behind a router.
 
yeah, they could see the traffic and knock it down. rogers/shaw doesnt do that to me, i dont even try to hide my piracy... (also canuckistani)
 
Last edited:
pendragon1 said:
yeah, they could see the traffic and knock it down. rogers/shaw doesnt do that to me, i dont even tried to hide my piracy... (also canuckistani)
Click to expand...
I'm on cable but it's Cogeco network out here. I'm using a 3rd party called coextro. They're kinda crap, I'm thinking of switching soon anyway. I just don't want to switch to find out I still have this problem.
 
could you try:
Go to Device Manager > Network Adapters.
Right-click your NIC (Intel or Realtek) > Properties > Advanced.
Find Flow Control and set it to Disabled.
Find Interrupt Moderation and set it to Disabled.

or Energy Efficient Ethernet ?

Maybe it is windows-ethernet reacting to a slow down message of the ISP in a way wireless device do not and VPN overhead create the situation of the PC trying to conserve energy, if your laptop has no throttle at all using the same VPN, the issue is probably not just the ISP, but difference between the machine.
 
Last edited:
LukeTbk said:
could you try:
Go to Device Manager > Network Adapters.
Right-click your NIC (Intel or Realtek) > Properties > Advanced.
Find Flow Control and set it to Disabled.
Find Interrupt Moderation and set it to Disabled.

or Energy Efficient Ethernet ?

Maybe it is windows-ethernet reacting to a slow down message of the ISP in a way wireless device do not and VPN overhead create the situation of the PC trying to conserve energy, if your laptop is no throttle at all using the same VPN, the issue is probably not just the ISP, but difference between the machine.
Click to expand...
It's worth a shot, thank you.

Also something to add....I also tried disabling wifi on my laptop and put the same ethernet cable into the laptop. Guess what? No speed problem.
 
Zepher said:
he mentions when he turns off the VPN, the speeds are fine
Click to expand...
Yep I saw that. If there's a device side vpn client then it could be something on just that client on just that device.

If it's on the router, then there could be some sort of setting that's making the router treat the desktop differently.
 
LukeTbk said:
could you try:
Go to Device Manager > Network Adapters.
Right-click your NIC (Intel or Realtek) > Properties > Advanced.
Find Flow Control and set it to Disabled.
Find Interrupt Moderation and set it to Disabled.

or Energy Efficient Ethernet ?

Maybe it is windows-ethernet reacting to a slow down message of the ISP in a way wireless device do not and VPN overhead create the situation of the PC trying to conserve energy, if your laptop has no throttle at all using the same VPN, the issue is probably not just the ISP, but difference between the machine.
Click to expand...
I'm suspecting it's something in this area since the laptop on wifi is fine.
 
THRESHIN said:
It's worth a shot, thank you.

Also something to add....I also tried disabling wifi on my laptop and put the same ethernet cable into the laptop. Guess what? No speed problem.
Click to expand...
Interesting. So it's definitely not a wired vs wifi thing.
 
Checklist time.

ISP fine without VPN on all systems
ISP fine with VPN on laptop/phone over wifi
ISP not fine on desktop with VPN
ISP is cable and you mention peak usage periods as when issue occurs

Three situations I can quickly think of:
1 - Cable is still is central hub/spoke design, especially for older sub 100MB connections. You could be using your desktop primarily during high traffic times when everything slows down. Caveat, if you disable your VPN during this time and issue clears consistently, not the problem.

2 - Your desktop is the issue in the form of the NIC or OS not liking the settings being applied at VPN policy set. Maybe try a USB network adapter to see if the NIC just doesn't like your VPN setup.

3 - Your phone or laptop may not be moving the same amount of traffic as your desktop or to the same locations. Questions ask - when you say they are fine, is the workload the same and comparable over multiple days?

I don't see ISP throttling involved depending on how you answer number 3. If the desktop is the power user space and laptop/phone is the social media small data bits space you don't have enough proof the laptop/phone is fine for the sporadic event you seem to have.
 
That_Sound_Guy said:
Checklist time.

ISP fine without VPN on all systems
ISP fine with VPN on laptop/phone over wifi
ISP not fine on desktop with VPN
ISP is cable and you mention peak usage periods as when issue occurs

Three situations I can quickly think of:
1 - Cable is still is central hub/spoke design, especially for older sub 100MB connections. You could be using your desktop primarily during high traffic times when everything slows down. Caveat, if you disable your VPN during this time and issue clears consistently, not the problem.

2 - Your desktop is the issue in the form of the NIC or OS not liking the settings being applied at VPN policy set. Maybe try a USB network adapter to see if the NIC just doesn't like your VPN setup.

3 - Your phone or laptop may not be moving the same amount of traffic as your desktop or to the same locations. Questions ask - when you say they are fine, is the workload the same and comparable over multiple days?

I don't see ISP throttling involved depending on how you answer number 3. If the desktop is the power user space and laptop/phone is the social media small data bits space you don't have enough proof the laptop/phone is fine for the sporadic event you seem to have.
Click to expand...

This is good. thank you.

1. Slowdown does not occur on any system at any time when not connected to VPN.

2. Maybe! I still have testing to do but it seems that their tech support may have come through on this one. they had me changed some DNS settings in their software as well as reset and then clear the DNS cache within their software and so far so good. I still have some testing to do and I want to determine what exactly seems to have fixed it. But I've run several speed tests today without issue, goes right to my connection maximum.

3. My desktop moves WAY more data on a daily basis than my phone or laptop. The laptop is usually turned off, it's basically my travel system or I set it up to play some LAN games with my kids. In fact I only bought a laptop because my dad had cancer and I was on the road away from home constantly taking him to appointments. I'm not a big phone user, for me the desktop is where it's at.

So bit more testing and I'll see what happens. I'll report back later with what the fix was and what they had me change.
 
Most common reason for VPN slowness on one system vs another is MTU + fragmentation. Should not be thing in the age of mtu discovery, but it us. Lower the mtu on the box in question by 30 bytes. Reboot and try again.
 
Nicklebon said:
Most common reason for VPN slowness on one system vs another is MTU + fragmentation. Should not be thing in the age of mtu discovery, but it us. Lower the mtu on the box in question by 30 bytes. Reboot and try again.
Click to expand...
Did try this in the past, only helped a little. Not a fix here. it often is, I did find that in my Internet diving.

So it seems that the fix was to use the options in their software to refresh the DNS cache and then clean it. This is limited to their software it seems.

I guess it does make sense. Times of higher load overall on the network and limited to the desktop which has highest usage.

My speeds are 40 down and 10 up. Just tried a server in Finland, got 38.62 down and 10.33 up. I'd say everything is fine now.
 
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