Just asking for advice, I am new to streaming. I am using a firetv with Kodi and I installed IPvanish as a VPN to use. My ISP speeds seem fine listed here. When I connect to the “best available city and connection” I get this. And when I connect to my closest city and best connection it slightly improves to this.
The issues I am having are pretty consistent. Streams may work okay for a period of time, but end up turning into stop motion films where the audio continues but the picture is just too choppy and slow to be useable. It seems to not matter the stream or source, just terrible playback and I am curious if it’s due to the drastic decrease in speed when using the VPN.
I have Private Internet Access & notice a definite drop in speeds while using my VPN (from ~100mb/s to 20). I have contacted their customer service numerous times, but they are not helpful & always blame it on my devices.
You will never get a 100Mbps streaming from a VPN it’s just not possible so you can expect alot of speed lost 35-40Mbps is the fastest any VPN goes and many people stream with a whole lot less than 35-40Mbps.
People been using VPNs for years to stream from Netfilx with no problems so its not so much to do with the VPN but the crappy servers youre trying stream most filehost have a limit on how fast they go.
Netflix advises 25 Mbps to stream 4k that’s a lot less than what a good vpn can do but there’s alot of factors you have to take in account . Is other people on you’re network , are the servers you’re using caped and/ or having problems because it’s the weekend and overloaded and are you hardwired or do you use Wifi ?
Using a VPN will never be faster or the same speed. For one, you are adding latency to a connection that probably didn’t have much latency before. So instead of going from home to Netflix, you go from home to Sweden to Netflix, back to Sweden and then home. 30 to 40 milliseconds for each packet, in each direction, adds up. Latency and distance slow things down, it’s physics. Secondly, you are at the mercy of the available bandwidth of the vpn endpoint. You have a 100mb connection but your vpn provider has 50mb? Guess what…you’ll never get more than 50mb. That’s an extreme example, but who knows what kind of bandwidth these vpn providers have? I’ve never seen them advertise it, or their congestion percentage. That’s another thing…even if they have a really fat pipe, if it’s constantly full and dropping packets, it will be slow. And one last thing, encryption adds overhead. You could fit 1500 things in shopping cart before? Now you can only fit 1436. It doesn’t seem like much, but it all adds up. How do you combat any of this? Pick an endpoint that is geographically close if you can. And just accept that what you gain in privacy, you give up a little in speed.
I used to have similar issues with IPVanish until I stopped paying attention to what was “supposed” to work best, and tested around enough to find out what “actually” worked best. At least for me. So yeah, couple key points I’ve found in my own experience:
Steer clear of using any of the “Best available” auto selections. They give you unreliable connections at best, and it never ends up being the actual best. Anytime you connect make sure it’s done manually, and that goes doubles for random reconnects since their glitchy Ui (at least on android) tends to default back to best available in those cases even when you set it differently.
The 2nd closest available server location was actually a lot better in my case then the actual closest. I got close to max speed from that one, where as i would sometimes get half that from the closest.
Server choice 1 or 2 always ended up being the fastest and most reliable of the up to 40 choices they sometimes give you. Usually 1, but when that goes down 2 tends to be the default choice for stability.
If you are going to run a VPN, a wired ethernet connection can make a huge difference. Right now my 100mbps connection is testing in (2nd closest, server 1) at roughly around 95mbps on my Nvidia Shield. I get maybe half that speed if I switch it to wifi.
Your device’s processing ability matters. Even with my router only being 4 feet away from my TV, running IPTV on my 2nd gen Firestick with IPVanish turned on is pretty much a no-go. Too much of a speed drop, too much going on in the back round.
I haven’t been using a VPN when using premiumize and Rd - no cease and desist letters yet. Supposedly my traffic to their servers are encrypted, though I’m not always sure if that makes it completely safe. I know for sure my torrent traffic through premiumize is protected, I’m thinking about dropping RD since the sources have been inconsistent.
having the same issue with IPVanish lately. very slow and kodi links wont even open because im guessing there is some sort of buffering issue. as soon as i turn the VPN off, works perfectly.
I asked this question a few days ago on here with no help
Try a different type of VPN tunneling. My speed was pretty shitty before I changed it. I forget the specifics. I will say that a VPN always introduces so latency and loss of speed in my experience.
Not surprising. You are sharing the concentrator with other VPN users and your traffic is tunneled. I.e. the traffic is forwarded inside the IPSec tunnel from the endpoint you choose to the destination “somewhere” where is decapsulated and sent to the actual destination while when you are connecting to the ISP directly the packet is routed to the destination the best route possible.
Always manually select your server, letting it automatically pick it usually will send you to their slower servers. IPVanish Speed Test : How Fast is IPVanish VPN?
This link shows you the speeds, generally any link from the United States are the fastest, with Toronto and Amsterdam being two of the fastest servers too. Not every server is whitelisted as well, so if you pick a random server from the States and your links aren’t working, just switch servers until they work again and you find a whitelisted one.
I recently signed up and even submitted a ticket last week (and their response was just a canned response). My speeds were fine and when I turn ipvanish on, it starts off strong and drop to under 2 meg. Like it’s being throttled. Even when downloadimg on steam, it goes from around 10 meg down to just mere kbs. However without the VPN I defiantly get fewer links and no hd. I turn it on I def get more links but my connection keeps dropping regardless of the server I am on.
I also have PIA and have noticed that speeds will drop off the longer you stay connected to the assigned IP address.
I disconnect and connect to another region and the speed picks back up. It’s around $7.00 a month, so my expectations are very low. Been with them since they first launched in '10 and just factor in that speeds are going to slow down from time to time and take it in stride.
Weird… My 100mb connection is saturated when using PIA on all my devices (Shield and a couple Linux machines)
The only time I notice a significant drop is when I use pia configured through my router. (I do that for my NAS only). Then my speeds drop to about 20mb… Which is really fine for my NAS so I don’t worry about it.
