Bandwidth throttling?

[mikes49]

Hello,

I used to be able to download files, say, a large 1gb file, and still have enough bandwidth to continue to browse the web or check email.

However, in the last few months, I notice once the download has begun, my vpn network adapter is maxed out at 99-100%, and I'm unable to do anything on the internet until the file completes its download.

My ISP's bandwidth is 60Mb/s, and I usually VPN through Canada, which usually offers me 20Mb/s. 

It doesn't affect me on other networked computers in the house, i..e, I can connect via my local ISP without any bandwidth problems.  Only the computer connected via BolehVPN maxes out during the download, yet I can do anything else just fine from the other computers not collected to BolehVPN.

Does anyone know what's going on?  Does anyone else experience the same problem?  I thought Boleh doesn't throttle people's bandwidth.  Has that changed?

Thanks.

[Slacker]

Hi mikes49,

BolehVPN doesn't throttle the VPN...

The tap-win32 adapter will report that it is a 10 Mbps device, but in theory it can support speeds up to ~ 160 Mbps... So if you're looking at this thinking your adapters are maxed out they aren't...

What CPU and OS are you running?

[mikes49]

Well, glad to know it's not everybody having the same problem, but... I wonder why my bandwidth hits a wall when downloading a file?

Anyway, I'm just running good old Windows 7 64-bit, on a i7  6-core processor (3.4ghz), 32gb RAM, Nvidia GTX 780 video card. The OS is running on an 256gb SSD, but I have about 6tb in storage space on other drives.

I can get faster speeds through the vpn adapter, of course, but 20mb/s seems to be the norm, depending on the time of day. But all it takes is a download of one large file, and boom, no more internet activity for me until it's done. If I try to browse google or something, I just get an error message (that it timed out trying to find the web page, or whatever).

Thanks for your help.

[Slacker]

Are you using the BolehVPN GUI application? If so, have you tried using just the OpenVPN client to see if it's any different?

You can download it below;

http://openvpn.net/index.php/download/community-downloads.html

[bblanks]

bandwidth throttling is not common. you have not used an exorbant amount of data. You are correct in asserting that, however, the time of day may have a small amount of influence. It should not be a marked response though.

[mikes49]

Thanks for the replies.

I did some experimenting, and it seems that it only affects certain download sites for me.  If I downloaded a large file, say Ubuntu Linux  from their website (regular download, not torrent), I don't have the throttling problem, if that's the right technical word. I don't mean 'throttle' as in slow down, but rather some governor not allowing me to do anything else during a download.

Note that torrents don't give me a problem.

Anyway, what I did next was to install both Chrome and Firefox, and then instead of using a Fully Routed connection as I usually do, I used a Proxied connection with Firefox.  With Chrome using my ISP's connection, and Firefox proxying through Boleh, I no longer experience the problem with the downloads.

I'm curious how certain sites can purposefully maximize your bandwidth so as to prevent you from downloading multiple files at once?

Has anyone else experienced this?

[Slacker]

To answer your last question, it just sounds like basic Web Congestion, some sites working, some slow, etc., nothing you can do about that.

But you should still be able to do something else, if you haven't used all your bandwidth.

I asked before if you are using the BolehVPN GUI? And if so to then test using the OpenVPN client...

Not sure what you meant by the VPN adapter, both through the BolehVPN GUI & OpenVPN clients is a VPN adapter.