topic Re: Wi-Fi Speeds with VPN after upgrading in Broadband & Landline

Wi-Fi Speeds with VPN after upgrading

DanC999 — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 14:24:07 GMT

I recently upgraded from 500Mbps fibre to 900Mbps Fibre. Previously before the upgrade when using my phone on Wi-Fi while connected to NordVPN I would get about 300Mbps download speed, which is fine I accept the use of a VPN will cause the speed to be slower than the 'full' speed. However since the upgrade my speed on Wi-Fi has stayed around the same. I have tested on my computer which is hardwired and get pretty much the correct speed (900Mbps) with or without a VPN.

As i've said I accept use of VPN on my phone will drop in speed slightly but over 50% drop does seem too much. I've tested without the VPN on my phone and get the full speed. I am using wireguard protocol, and live in a 1 bed flat so never too far from the router.

Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions, or has had this problem themselves?

Re: Wi-Fi Speeds with VPN after upgrading

Northerner — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:12:47 GMT

Hi @DanC999

Tried connecting to a different VPN server. This doesn't sound like an EE issue.

Thanks

Re: Wi-Fi Speeds with VPN after upgrading

XRaySpeX — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 18:08:10 GMT

@DanC999 wrote:
I've tested without the VPN on my phone and get the full speed.

Points to VPN being the culprit.

Re: Wi-Fi Speeds with VPN after upgrading

DanC999 — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 19:52:28 GMT

Yeah, it does seem most likely, just found it strange that with the same vpn on my computer I had no issues

Re: Wi-Fi Speeds with VPN after upgrading

HusDawg — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 03:10:51 GMT

I’m starting to think this isn’t actually a VPN issue, because I get the same behaviour in the same conditions (EE, NordVPN, WiFi etc)

Over Wi-Fi I hit my full ~900 Mbps with the VPN off, but as soon as I turn NordVPN on it drops to about half.

On my PC over Ethernet, speeds are fine either way, VPN on or off makes no difference.

What’s weird is that switching to NordWhisper over Wi-Fi makes it faster again, just not quite full speed (probably protocol overhead?).

Which EE router are you using? I’ve got the Smart Hub 7 Pro.

Re: Wi-Fi Speeds with VPN after upgrading

DanC999 — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 04:59:46 GMT

Oh interesting, I tried with Nordwhisper and yeah pretty much get the speed I’d expect. So it does seem like the Nordlynx protocol causing the issue.

I believe I have the Smarthub 6.

Re: Wi-Fi Speeds with VPN after upgrading

widdowsonben — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 07:05:32 GMT

Running Nord over a Virgin 1gbs connection I'm lucky if I can get even 100 let alone the 300 you have. I do wonder if the increase in UK customers waiting to avoid certain restrictions hasn't been matched by investment in capacity their end.

Re: Wi-Fi Speeds with VPN after upgrading

DanC999 — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 08:02:38 GMT

I’ve been looking into this a little more and found these could be likely reasons nordlynx over WiFi cause issues

Most likely causes are MTU / packet fragmentation issues on the hub’s Wi-Fi path and poor UDP queue handling in the Smart Hub 6 Wi-Fi firmware. WireGuard uses UDP with fixed packet sizes, so dropped packets tank performance. TCP-based VPNs recover cleanly, which is why NordWhisper works.

Ethernet isn’t affected because it uses a different, more stable processing path in the hub and doesn’t hit the Wi-Fi UDP buffering/fragmentation problems.

Re: Wi-Fi Speeds with VPN after upgrading

mustard — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:26:54 GMT

Bear in mind encrypting and decrypting traffic over the VPN is processor intensive. Behaviour on different devices may therefore vary according to processing power and processor usage. So using a VPN on a phone it's quite possible for speeds to drop by 50% as processor use spikes upwards. That would certainly explain why the issue isn't duplicated on a PC.