How to improve my speed to UK?

[TheCruncher]

As the title says.

I have a 10Mb connection and usually my speedtests to US or other parts in the world reach that number.

As of this weekend my speeds to Europe are in the 3Mb range, while those to US are still around 10Mb.

I've read several times that a VPN will improve the speed, so I tested a free VPN ( tunnelbear) to figure out if this is correct.

The result however showed a far less speed, regardless of which server I selected.

So my question is if a VPN indeed significantly will increase the speed to UK from Thailand, or is this just another myth?

To me it is actually hard to believe that by adding an extra hub you can improve speed, but I'm open to your comments.

[KhunBENQ]

At the moment connections to UK (speedtest) and misc. servers in Germany are close to useless for me.

Exceptional.

There was a report about that defect or under maintenance sea-cables.

Many complaints in the forum during the last days.

Seems like now I am being hit.

Be patient and hope for a better tomorrow

[TheCruncher]

At the moment connections to UK (speedtest) and misc. servers in Germany are close to useless for me.

Exceptional.

There was a report about that defect or under maintenance sea-cables.

Many complaints in the forum during the last days.

Seems like now I am being hit.

Be patient and hope for a better tomorrow

Thanks, I found that thread also in the mean time, which probably explains why I have slow speeds to Western Europe.

But the purpose of the thread is actually to find out if it is a myth or reality that a VPN in fact improves speeds to a certain geo location.

My experiment with a free VPN proves the opposite, so that why i want to find out the truth before spending any money on a paid service.

[NeverSure]

Where is the VPN server located? If it's in a far country it will slow you down. Also, free VPN's can sometimes get overloaded. In general yes, a VPN adds at least one more hop and some processing time but under the right circumstances it isn't very noticeable.

Cheers.

[TheCruncher]

Where is the VPN server located? If it's in a far country it will slow you down. Also, free VPN's can sometimes get overloaded. In general yes, a VPN adds at least one more hop and some processing time but under the right circumstances it isn't very noticeable.

Cheers.

So if I read a bit between the lines, a decent VPN will not slow you down, but certainly also not increase your speed. Is that correct?

Edited March 13, 2016 by TheCruncher

[taotoo]

Where is the VPN server located? If it's in a far country it will slow you down. Also, free VPN's can sometimes get overloaded. In general yes, a VPN adds at least one more hop and some processing time but under the right circumstances it isn't very noticeable.

Cheers.

So if I read a bit between the lines, a decent VPN will not slow you down, but certainly also not increase your speed. Is that correct?

I find it's sometimes quicker, sometimes slower. Often quicker if it's located in the same country as the website I'm trying to access.

[TheCruncher]

Where is the VPN server located? If it's in a far country it will slow you down. Also, free VPN's can sometimes get overloaded. In general yes, a VPN adds at least one more hop and some processing time but under the right circumstances it isn't very noticeable.

Cheers.

So if I read a bit between the lines, a decent VPN will not slow you down, but certainly also not increase your speed. Is that correct?

I find it's sometimes quicker, sometimes slower. Often quicker if it's located in the same country as the website I'm trying to access.

I just tried another one recommended in another thread.

http://freevpnnetwork.com/

I connected to UK server, did a speedtest to UK server, and got results 50% higher ping and 30% lower speed.

I tried to connect to the US server, since my speedtests to US are good at the moment, but couldn't connect.

In my opinion the higher speeds with VPN is a myth.

[losworld]

Ridiciulos you can't increase your speed certainly not with a vpn.

[TheCruncher]

Ridiciulos you can't increase your speed certainly not with a vpn.

That are also my original thoughts, but I kept reading on this forum from members claiming how their VPN improved their speeds.

I also keep reading on the Kodi forums about how VPN's can solve the buffering of live streams. But then they also claim you can cache a Live stream .

Edited March 13, 2016 by TheCruncher

[eaglesflight]

The only advantage I have noticed is that I can often open websites when they are not responding without the VPN. I'm assuming this is because of temporary routing issues between my Thai ISP and the sites in question, which the VPN is able to circumvent. This is pot luck however, so not a really reason to use a VPN (although it does happen quite often).

[TheCruncher]

The only advantage I have noticed is that I can often open websites when they are not responding without the VPN. I'm assuming this is because of temporary routing issues between my Thai ISP and the sites in question, which the VPN is able to circumvent. This is pot luck however, so not a really reason to use a VPN (although it does happen quite often).

I think the reason for that is that the websites detect that you connect from Thailand, but if you have a connection although buffering as in my situation, the VPN will probably not improve anything.

[sunnyjim5]

I have not bothered to run a test but I can say I watched the Rugby games yesterday via ITV player, Browsec (set to UK) and a 3BB ADSL connection without any problem.

[taotoo]

Where is the VPN server located? If it's in a far country it will slow you down. Also, free VPN's can sometimes get overloaded. In general yes, a VPN adds at least one more hop and some processing time but under the right circumstances it isn't very noticeable.

Cheers.

So if I read a bit between the lines, a decent VPN will not slow you down, but certainly also not increase your speed. Is that correct?

I find it's sometimes quicker, sometimes slower. Often quicker if it's located in the same country as the website I'm trying to access.

I just tried another one recommended in another thread.

http://freevpnnetwork.com/

I connected to UK server, did a speedtest to UK server, and got results 50% higher ping and 30% lower speed.

I tried to connect to the US server, since my speedtests to US are good at the moment, but couldn't connect.

In my opinion the higher speeds with VPN is a myth.

Well I've never done a speedtest with the VPN I use, all I know is if a website is slow, turning on the VPN will often speed it up (especially if same country). By the way you said "a decent vpn" but tested a free one.

[losworld]

Guys do your tests with testmy.net not speedtest.

[TheCruncher]

So if I read a bit between the lines, a decent VPN will not slow you down, but certainly also not increase your speed. Is that correct?

I find it's sometimes quicker, sometimes slower. Often quicker if it's located in the same country as the website I'm trying to access.

I just tried another one recommended in another thread.

http://freevpnnetwork.com/

I connected to UK server, did a speedtest to UK server, and got results 50% higher ping and 30% lower speed.

I tried to connect to the US server, since my speedtests to US are good at the moment, but couldn't connect.

In my opinion the higher speeds with VPN is a myth.

Well I've never done a speedtest with the VPN I use, all I know is if a website is slow, turning on the VPN will often speed it up (especially if same country). By the way you said "a decent vpn" but tested a free one.

The words "decent vpn" I repeated from Neversure, and yes I tried a free one, because I'm hesitant to fork out money for a service if I'm not sure that it will deliver the results I'm after.

So far nobody has confirmed that a paid vpn will improve my speeds.

[taotoo]

Ridiciulos you can't increase your speed certainly not with a vpn.

You can't make a 10mb connection a 20mb one, but in certain real-world circumstances you CAN get increased speed over what you would get without a VPN. I do this regularly - with some websites the difference is consistently night and day.

[TheCruncher]

Guys do your tests with testmy.net not speedtest.

That is just another myth, but to make sure I just ran the testmy.net test to UK server, and the results were similar.

In fact where speedtest gave me a result of 3.7 Mb download, testmy.net gave me a result of 3.9 mb

[TheCruncher]

Ridiciulos you can't increase your speed certainly not with a vpn.

You can't make a 10mb connection a 20mb one, but in certain real-world circumstances you CAN get increased speed over what you would get without a VPN. I do this regularly - with some websites the difference is consistently night and day.

Could you please post some screen shots of speedtest results to UK server with and without VPN?

[taotoo]

The words "decent vpn" I repeated from Neversure, and yes I tried a free one, because I'm hesitant to fork out money for a service if I'm not sure that it will deliver the results I'm after.

So far nobody has confirmed that a paid vpn will improve my speeds.

Actually you didn't, but anyway I don't think anybody can give you the confirmation you seek, and since other people's experiences are "myths" maybe you should risk $5 or so and try one for yourself. Good luck I'm going to bed.

[TheCruncher]

The words "decent vpn" I repeated from Neversure, and yes I tried a free one, because I'm hesitant to fork out money for a service if I'm not sure that it will deliver the results I'm after.

So far nobody has confirmed that a paid vpn will improve my speeds.

Actually you didn't, but anyway I don't think anybody can give you the confirmation you seek, and since other people's experiences are "myths" maybe you should risk $5 or so and try one for yourself. Good luck I'm going to bed.

Have a good night, but I would have thought that you would have been eager to post some speedtest results to rebuke my claim of "myths".

[taotoo]

Ridiciulos you can't increase your speed certainly not with a vpn.

You can't make a 10mb connection a 20mb one, but in certain real-world circumstances you CAN get increased speed over what you would get without a VPN. I do this regularly - with some websites the difference is consistently night and day.

Could you please post some screen shots of speedtest results to UK server with and without VPN?

Screenshots attached - they're basically the same. But the point is that in the real world there will sometimes be a big difference in speed, regardless of any speedtest (due to routing maybe, I don't know).

[taotoo]

The words "decent vpn" I repeated from Neversure, and yes I tried a free one, because I'm hesitant to fork out money for a service if I'm not sure that it will deliver the results I'm after.

So far nobody has confirmed that a paid vpn will improve my speeds.

Actually you didn't, but anyway I don't think anybody can give you the confirmation you seek, and since other people's experiences are "myths" maybe you should risk $5 or so and try one for yourself. Good luck I'm going to bed.

Have a good night, but I would have thought that you would have been eager to post some speedtest results to rebuke my claim of "myths".

I can't rebuke your claim by posting speedtests, as they only show speedtest performance, not real-world performance. If I could be bothered I'd make a video of me accessing a UK website's backend, with and without the VPN. The difference in page load is seconds. But I don't care enough to do that. Now I really am going to bed. Just to reiterate, a VPN will not turbo-charge your internet connection - all it can do is in certain circumstances avoid a problem by different routing or whatever.

[Chicog]

VPNs will speed up the woeful DNS resolution times you might experience in Thailand, but I wonder if you can't get round that with OpenDNS.

But since I'm not there I can't say.

[Cirencester]

Where is the VPN server located? If it's in a far country it will slow you down. Also, free VPN's can sometimes get overloaded. In general yes, a VPN adds at least one more hop and some processing time but under the right circumstances it isn't very noticeable.

Cheers.

So if I read a bit between the lines, a decent VPN will not slow you down, but certainly also not increase your speed. Is that correct?

Just tested my Zenmate. with it on speed around 6% lower to uk so nothing to be bothered about. Never really understood guys who wants mega speed connections. If it streams TV or Youtube why do you need more !