You're unfortunately into the realms of art as much as science here. I'll give you a brief list of points to consider, but atm with the greatest respect I just can't type out a huge post for various reasons.
* Your rig. Make sure there are no bottlenecks. Are you running an NVMe or SATA3 SSD? Do you have a capable processor with hardware acceleration for AES? If so does it match your VPN provider's cypher? No point having AES-CBC-256 offload if your VPN is using AES-GCM or EC... etc. Do you have sufficient RAM and is your system set up to take proper advantage of such speeds without choking (I'm looking at you, Windows)? Have you tried a Linux live USB such as Manjaro with a known fast network stack and realtime or close to upstream parity driver versions? Failing that (or in addition) have you disabled your local software firewall and AV?
Windows 10 64bit home edition.
Core i5 4670K @ 4Ghz
16GB DDR3 1600Mhz memory
nvidia ASUS 1080 Ti OC graphics card
SATA3 SSD - Samsung 840 EVO 250GB (+ other SSD's & HDD) with the Samsung Magician software boosting the OS/programs SSD.
So, AES matching my VPN's cypher - that just goes over my head! lol, I've never touched anything with the Linux. I've tried disabling my firewall/AV.
Soon I'll be building my next PC just for new CPU, RAM, SSD's, mobo, case.
* Your network. Do you have a good gigabit or 10Gbe setup? By good I mean Intel PCI-e NICs (not onboard) with minimum cat5e ethernet, plugged into a high horsepower Intel powered firewall/router? Ideally for a connection like yours I'd be running Intel Pro 1000 NICs in the machines connecting over ethernet to Intel NICs on a custom x86 box running OpenBSD, pfSense or VyOS. For example a £200 matx setup with a Pentium G4560, Intel Pro 1000 MT quad port server NIC and BSD would route gigabit VPN no issues. Eliminating local network issues is important. If you can pull 950Mbps or so without VPN you're probably good - albeit not truly optimised if you're using onboard NICs and mediocre routing and switching gear etc.
I run Cat6 ethernet cables to everything with a LAN port, but the ISP router WAN and LAN ports is limited to 1Gbps I think, same for my switch.
The last time I used a NIC card was 15-16 years ago when 512k broadband first came about, since then motherboards have had onboard ethernet so I've always used that.
I've no idea about a custom x86 box running OpenBSD, pfSense or VyOS etc.
I haven't yet tried connecting the PC directly to the ISP ethernet wall socket, bypassing all routing in my home. I tried it a year ago just to see if I'd gain any faster latency or broadband speed but it made no difference.
* Your VPN. Which provider is it? What servers do they have? If you tell me who they are I'll have a good idea of the topology and efficacy of their network without you having to type it all out. How are you connecting? Details, please. TCP or UDP? Ports tried? Their own software or your own, and if so what? What cypher(s) and authentication are you using? For example AES-CBC-256 and SHA512, or similar. Which servers have you tried, and have you benched alternatives? How are you testing throughput exactly?
I use ExpressVPN, just signed up today. I've tried their UK London and Netherlands servers so far.
UDP TCP etc I'm a bit clueless with those settings I've never really bothered with them particularly with any routers I've ever had. So I've always let them run their own software as they've always pretty much just worked for me.
Kind of the same thing with AES-CBC ? I've only ever noticed AES in wireless settings as an option over TKIP, WPA/2 etc.
I haven't done lots of testing and trying loads of different methods yet, I was hoping not to.
Have you tried other VPN providers? Have you tried IPSec? Have you tried SSH instead of VPN? Have you tried OpenVPN over SSL or over SSH using stunnel? Basically give all the detail you can, and we'll see what we can see. Don't forget your usual VPN provider is running multiple 1Gbps servers (the crappier ones - including some 'big names' - on crappy VPS instead of colo dedis). If there are a few dozen users on there you're actually doing quite well to be pulling 180Mbps - that's almost 20% of the server's ability to one user out of dozens or even hundreds... Some of the better VPN companies have dedicated 10Gbps servers, and allow various protocols to connect. They'll often also be running custom kernels with optimisations for IPSec, openvpn, GCM etc.
This is pretty much my first experience with VPN so I've not tried other providers. IPsec, SSH, OpenVPN I've no clue what those are sorry. I've just done a google search to check out IPsec... think I'll need a bit more time to digest all that lol, I've got to be up for work in 4 hours so I best get some sleep for now. Will try some ideas out when I get home tomorrow.
