Verizon Appears To Be Throttling VPN Connections HEAVILY!
The_Doctor
Newbie

Hi all, I believe this is my first post on the Verizon forums. I have been a FiOS user since it came to my neighborhood, I was one of the first to sign up, and I have always been delighted with my service up until the last couple of days. I am one of the heaviest users, I have gotten the bandwidth warning letter twice, but I now keep my usage low enough to stay below their limit, which is said to be 10 TB a month.

Anyway, most of my traffic flows through an OpenVPN tunnel, and it has been working quite well for several years. Although I usually apply my own bandwidth limiting, I can easily max out my 75/75 connection in either direction if I turn my bandwidth limiting off. I tested out several different VPNs a while back, and noted which one would allow me to Max my connection out for a long period of time without causing any slowdown.

What has happened in the last two or three days is that my connection will very quickly go from like 35 MB/S through the VPN down to anywhere from 0 to 10 kB/S and remain there for many hours at a time, regardless of what type of application I'm trying to route through the VPN. During these time periods, my direct connection will still work happily at full speed in either direction. But the VPN is essentially shut down.

I know your first response, the problem is obviously with my VPN provider. Yes, I thought that as well. And after being down for a bout eight hours the first time, the speed very suddenly went back up to normal, just like somebody through a switch. I assume my VPN provider had a problem, and that they got it fixed. About 12 hours later the speed went back down very close to zero. I rebooted, and reconnected. No change, VPN essentially dead. I tried to more servers from the same VPN provider, located in two different countries. Same result. I next try these three servers from another computer, again same result, VPN not flowing.

At this point I was pretty sure I was dealing with some type of throttling, was not sure if it was Verizon or the VPN company. So I set up a one-month account with one of the other VPN providers which I found to be quite fast in the past. I tried several of their servers located in several different countries, pretty much the same result. The connection would start out working for about 10 or 15 seconds, then drop down to approximately dial-up speed and not go up again. I also tried this VPN provider on two different computers.

Does anybody here know why they have started doing this? Or if this is going to be a permanent "feature"? I would really like to know the future of FiOS throttling, as I am do to renew my contract in three months. My original reason for coming to Verizon was to get away from the Comcast caps. Having an important part of my functionality turned off is no better. If I know this is going to continue, I can just go back to Comcast and save a lot of money each month.

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Re: Verizon Appears To Be Throttling VPN Connections HEAVILY!
jonjones1
Legend

You are replying to a three year old post. Long settled.

if you have a problem with your speeds which are guaranteed up to 940/880 on gigabyte service and not over WiFi.

speedtest.net is not accepted for such tests on Fios 

I am pretty sure this thread will be locked due to its age.

View solution in original post

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Re: Verizon Appears To Be Throttling VPN Connections HEAVILY!
CaptainSTX
Contributor - Level 3

I run all my Internet traffic with the exception of Netflix streaming through my VPN.  (OpenVPN)

I normally get 95% or better of the download speed I am paying for (75/75) when running a speed test for downloads.  Upload speeds are more variable and lower.    

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4464459660

I don't use the data that you consume however.  A typical month for me is 125 GB.  The total includes my Netflix streaming.

I have been using a VPN on FIOS for nineteen months and don't see any evidence that they are throttling me.

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Re: Verizon Appears To Be Throttling VPN Connections HEAVILY!
TomCollins1
Newbie

I would like to say as of 2 days ago, I'm expressing the same issue.  I've attempted to connect to different VPN (openVPN) servers, all resulting with a max of 30 kbps download.  Please post if you find a resolution and/or confirmation fios has started to throttle.  I must say, I don't use nearly as much data as you though.

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Re: Verizon Appears To Be Throttling VPN Connections HEAVILY!
smith6612
Community Leader
Community Leader

I'm not on a VPN very often at home, and have not seen issues as a result. I'm getting approximately my full rated connection speed over a VPN.

If you suspect throttling, and you know it's not a side effect of MTU / Packet loss, please inform the FCC.

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Re: Verizon Appears To Be Throttling VPN Connections HEAVILY!
MyTechGuyRI
Enthusiast - Level 1

Same here.  I pay for gigabit which i never actually get... But around 500mb/s..... If i try to stream video my connection is throttled to about 5mb/s . so i turn on my VPN connection and it improves somewhat to about 20mb/s.  But nothing even remotely close to the 500mb/s i get when not streaming video or using a vpn

Using speedtest without vpn 500mbps with vpn 20mbps

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Re: Verizon Appears To Be Throttling VPN Connections HEAVILY!
jonjones1
Legend

You are replying to a three year old post. Long settled.

if you have a problem with your speeds which are guaranteed up to 940/880 on gigabyte service and not over WiFi.

speedtest.net is not accepted for such tests on Fios 

I am pretty sure this thread will be locked due to its age.

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Re: Verizon Appears To Be Throttling VPN Connections HEAVILY!
LawrenceC
Moderator Emeritus

As this thread is now over two years old, it will be locked in order to keep discussions current. If you have the same or a similar question/issue we invite you to start a new thread on the topic.

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