I have a Balance 310 with two ISP connected to it at work, one with Videotron and the other with Bell. (I’m in Canada). The Videotron is a 60MB download and 10MB upload over Cable DHCP, and Bell is a 18MB download and 7MB upload. I have two VPN connection setup so I can connect over one or the other if one connection fails. I work from home and I have the same Videotron 60/10 kind of connection.
Now here is the problem…
If I connect through the Videotron VPN and upload something using the terminal (Mac OS) with ssh and rsync, I get speed of 100 to 300 kB/s.
If I connect throught the Bell VPN using the same protocol I get speed of 500kB/s-to 1 MB/s which is more than double!
If I connect through the Videotron VPN and DOWNLOAD something I get 600-to 900 kB/s or so, all using the same thing, ssh and rsync.
I get about the same thing with the Bell VPN.
So my question is why would one VPN which is suppose to be on a faster connection be slower then the other? I have NO firewall setup, no Rules except the HTTPS persistant. It can’t be Videotron that is throttling my bandwith because when I use the Bell VPN I achieve faster speed.
Hi Jeff, this sounds like classic throttling behavior from the ISP and Bell is throttling less. Could be over-saturation of the network as well, have to remember that these are not guaranteed speeds but marketed and sold as “Up To” speeds.
The Peplink Balance does not care who the ISP is and it simply processes packets and puts them on the wire, so we would need to look towards the ISP for any bottlenecks.
Can you tell me why then, the same ISP and kind of connection (the Videotron 60/10) from work can upload to the same speed as the Bell connection? But not from home? And if I’m on the Bell VPN, I get proper speed upload from home, which is still the same Videotron link. That’s what bothers me, if I had the same speed with both VPN from home, even if it was slower then doing the reverse (upload from work to my home) then I’d say it’s throttling from videotron, but since I have speed difference, it doesn’t make sense. Retesting this morning, I got a little better speed on the Videotron VPN, but not much.
I’d need a way to connect from another Videotron user to my server and see if I get the same behavior. My boss has the same connection then me, but user the terminal is not such an easy thing to ask him;-)
I have no idea. Is the work connection a business class circuit and the home connection a residential one?
I just know that we have seen this same type of issue before and it almost always points back to the ISP.
To further rule out the Peplink, I suggest to swap the WAN connections around and re-test. If Videotron is currently plugged in to WAN 1, swap it over to WAN 2 and vice-versa.
Yes, Although we both have Videotron 60/10, mine is residential and the one at work is Business, so that MIGHT be it. That’s why I have to test if the same thing happens if my Boss tries to do the same thing from his home and if he gets the same results I do. Since I’m at home right now, I can’t switch the WANs. This will have to wait, but has you said, I don’t think this is will change anything. I’ll try calling Videotron about this and see what they have to say.
Jeff, I think we just figured it out. The business class connection would have a better grade of service over the residential one, and I’m sure you pay more for it too.
But since I have the home class, and work as the business class, why is it that going through the Bell VPN all is good from my end? Just as a general question, would a VPN mask the kind of traffic that goes on or it would still being seen by the provider?
And if the connection from my work “fails” to give me the same speed when connected through VPN, shouldn’t it be Videotron Business that I should call?
ISP’s use DPI to analyze the traffic going across their networks so that they can throttle and apply fair-use policies, etc.
I don’t know exactly what is happening in your specific case, but I can tell you that the Peplink is not the bottleneck. We are just routing the packets and sending them on the wire.
I called the Videotron Business unit and they are sending someone to fix the signal that they say is not on spec. I’ll keep you posted on the results. Thanks again.
No problem Jeff. Sounds like your SNR on your cable modem is low causing poor performance, probably a piece of equipment in their plant or someone in the neighborhood has an amplifier hooked up or bad splitters attached, etc.
DSL lines are also susceptible to poor performance due to aging copper and infrastructure.
A service call from the ISP often resolves these issues.
