7
1
My Internet connection is for 30 Mbps with TWC (Cable), which is usually pretty close to what I actually get.
However, lately I've been using a VPN (PrivateInternetAccess.com) on my desktop. I was curious how my speed was over the VPN, so I ran a speed test, and my speed came in at 175 Mbps, which seems insane.
I verified it with three speed tests, turned the VPN off and tried again, then turned it back on and tried again. Here are my results:
TEST 1 (With VPN)
SpeedTest.net - 175 Mpbs
SpeakEasy.net - 88 Mbps
Xfinity - 228 Mbps
Test 2: (VPN Off)
SpeedTest.net - 34 Mpbs
SpeakEasy.net - 34 Mbps
Xfinity - 34 Mbps
Test 3 (VPN Turned Back On)
SpeedTest.net - 176 Mpbs
SpeakEasy.net - 91 Mbps
Xfinity - 236 Mbps
My question is how is this possible? Is it somehow faking out the tests, or is it possible that this VPN is somehow increasing my speed by 5X?
2Very weird... maybe your physical cable & modem can do way more than 30 Mb/s, and it's throttled at the ISP level, but for some reason (configuration error on one of the ISP's routers) the throttling doesn't affect your connection to the VPN server, or maybe the throttling is only set to affect common protocols such as HTTP while leaving more "obscure" stuff like VPNs untouched. – None – 2014-08-05T19:50:56.573
1@AndréDaniel - That was my initial guess too, but it seems like TWC would have better throttling than that. Anyway, I've verified that I'm actually getting that speed, so I'm just going to enjoy it while it lasts =o) – Eli – 2014-08-05T19:56:18.300