I have been downloading usenet binaries for quite some time using ProtonVPN connection to Eweka servers with no problems at all. The last 2 week s I notice my downloads start off as normal giving me 70-80 MB/s and then plummet to a mere but steady 500 Kb/s. I can repeat this process by connecting to another server. For 100GB+ downloads this is tedious obviously.
I don’t have this problem when downloading on my connection without VPN and my ISP says they are not throttling VPN. This is a recent change and the only thing I can think of is that Proton is limiting Free serveris. Is this the case? If it isn’t what can be wrong?
I also tried switching to TCP only but that didn’t work either.
In general, free servers are simply slower than paid servers, because the capacity is limited and the free servers have load balancers that constantly optimize to ensure that all users can have enough bandwidth to maintain a stable connection and not get inadvertently disconnected. The free servers are not designed for heavy usage, downloading lots of files, and also block BitTorrent, because we need to support millions of free users from countries like Russia, Iran, so that they can gain access to the free internet.
In recent months, free server usage has picked up significantly in many countries where democracy is under attack. With students returning to school around the world and the end of the summer holidays, there is also just significantly more load compared to previously on free servers.
For heavier usage, we really suggest getting the paid plan, which starts at 4.99/month with a 2-year subscription, and is capable of extremely high speeds since our paid server network is using 10Gbps uplinks.
The details here seem to be very similar to another post that was made a few weeks back, and in line with another post made today on the subject. Judging by the behavior you have seen and the other post, it seems likely that for either for testing or server management reasons that at times a restriction has been implemented on free servers to have a hard limit in the neighborhood of 500KB/s after using a some amount of data on a connection, though I don’t believe there has been any comment made about such a restriction.
Same here, it goes from full speed to 500kb/s after exactly 4GB bandwidth usage. Disconnecting and reconnecting to a different server restarts the process.
I’ve tried every combination of protocols, 4 different devices, and same result. I’ve use proton free for years without issue until last weekend. I’m not experiencing this on other vpns.
I haven’t had a chance to test on another ISP yet, I suspect either proton is throttling heavy users or a specific ISP is throttling proton connections.
If you are doing 100GB+ downloads, you really should be using the paid plan and not the free plan. Paid servers have 10Gbps network connections, while free servers are sharing 1Gbps network connectivity across potentially thousands of users so there is a big difference in speed. For heavy usage, we really recommend upgrading to paid. With VPN accelerator technology, paid servers are sometimes even faster than no VPN.
Did you ever end up switch because of being throttled with a plus membership ? I am considering getting a plus but not if I’m going to be throttled to 500kbs.
Whatever limit there is, it’s seemingly on every server. The moment I start a download with my 1g correction, it goes to unusable speeds. Previously I could download my entire Steam library without any form of limit.