Frustrating network & VPN issues

VPN
1

Hi,

My SO and I play a lot of online games, the last couple of months mostly Path of Exile. Now the EU servers are dreadful reaching around 4-500 ms so we decided to use a VPN to be able to play on US servers. We chose a Swedish month-by-month subscription service called Mullvad because it’s the best one. As we’re not network tech savvy we installed separate VPN on our PC’s instead of using a server.

Onto the issue: everytime we launch the game, it crashes for my SO at least 3-4 times before he can play. Sometimes he has to reboot. Oftentimes I come online and get 100 Ms, which is normal, but then suddenly it reaches up to 1000 ms and I have to log out and reboot. Then we can play, but with microlag, stutter.

Our connection is 500/500Mbps fiber, connected through an ASUS RT-AC68U latest firmware.

My suspicion is that it has something to do with the DNS settings in the router or the VPN, but I wouldn’t even know where to start. The error message my SO gets before the crash flashes by in a split second but it says something about “network failing.”

As I’m writing this, he’s in his workshop trying to build a Windows 10 VPN server for our PC’s to connect to, out of sheer frustration. If this is the way to go, any tips on how to build it would be helpful.

Much appreciated,
Exile

Update:

So we tried all of your suggestions, nothing worked. The VPN support was helpful and we figured out that the problem was on our end. Pingplotter didn’t really show anything weird either. Still we got these massive lagspikes (19092ms)
So we decided to try something drastic, set up our own server with Ethernet sharing, I don’t know, maybe bypass some kind of bottleneck. Anyway, to our next issue:

We’re using Windows Server 12 R2, trying to set it up as a DHCP server. It’s no fun. Worked great until we connected it to the router. Enabled DHCP but nope. So we figured, let’s try static IP instead. Turns out our ISP only gives out two which means one unit has to go through a router, right? Now everything is offline, PC’s, TV, phones, the whole shebang.

I’m about to throw everything in the pool at this stage.

TL;DR
Trying to play PoE but due to massive lag and crashes and the fault probably being within our network, we built a server. And now we need help with the setup.

2

VPNs add to latency, all else being equal. So does distance, like connecting to a North American server from Europe.

Path of Exile’s operator must be crap at running their server network if connecting to EU servers from Sweden is a worse choice than making a VPN tunnel to North America.

3

Yes, this is well known in the PoE community unfortunately. There’s this common “joke”, the EU server is a big potato field.

4

No not yet but I will now. I guess I took for granted the fault had to be with our setup or ISP.

5

Well this is where it gets weird. I’m usually connected to NY since it’s the US city closest to Sweden and then connect to the game server in Washington DC. I log on, 100ms, play a bit, then 3-400ms. Log out. Choose the same server again, no issues. My SO, can’t play on US servers, he can only play when connected to EU servers through VPN.

The struggle is real.

6

Thanks, I’ll do that tonight. PoE 2 is dropping in November so if they’re planning on using the same server farms, we’re cooked otherwise.