VPN slows speed from 327MBps to 91 MBps according to the Xfinity speed test. There are times when it must be even slower since I experience unusual lag in Office 365. At least Office 365 is functional which was not the situation with my previous VPN.
Just one more thing, turning SmartByte off in it's console does not completely stop it. I just found the service "SmartByte Network Service x64" and 2 processes "SmartByte Network Service" and "SmartByte Telemetry". I will say that halting those 2 processes completely stops my ability to access the web, but doesn't shut down my networking ability. I can still ping my network devices either wired or wireless. Unless I find out something significant concerning these items interfering with Norton, I won't post anything more about this.
I know what you're saying and I agree, Charlie. I just wanted to see if I could identify anything/something that could be missed causing the problem. The only thing I can definitely say causes a problem is that SmartByte application, but I believe that's a separate issue from most of the speed complaints. Each of those "tests" produced slightly different results, but the bottom line is the VPN does reduce the network speed significantly. Overall Norton 360 works well if your goal is to protect your PC. If the main reason your buying the product is for the VPN, I would say look elsewhere.
Hi Lvingston,
Everything you say is true except Norton VPN is not a good product. You will enjoy faster speed with a good and reliable Third Party VPN.
Will the usage of a VPN gradual down my internet speed? The speed of your Internet connection is determined with the aid of the distance between your area and the VPN server you choose, and with the aid of the Internet connection pace furnished through your ISP. Generally, the the further away you are from a given VPN server the slower the speed
After some testing, my ideas are (1) try another vpn like vpnbook https://www.vpnbook.com/; (2) some sites and ISP may throttle VPN services and (3) Have you changed the Norton vpn server.
In my case my problems may be either the site that I may trying to connect to and my ISP throttles vpn service. I don't know which is the cause.
Hi middletown0211,
Just try another Third Party VPN and you do not have to go through all those troubles of testing and testing.
On my Dell PC, outlined earlier in this thread, the Dell SmartByte application is what was causing the VPN to completely crash on my system. My definition of crash is it would not work at all. You can turn this application off within the SmartByte console and tt solves that issue. If it's a PC you've completely wiped and reinstalled Windows 10, don't do the Dell Update for SmartByte and it won't be activated on the PC. I've also found out what is causing the VPN to run incredibly slow, but I want to confirm it before posting. I just need to image my drive to move forward. As I stated earlier, these tests are being conducted with only those applications loaded during a fresh Windows 10 install except Mcafee Antivirus (loaded with Windows 10 install). I uninstalled that before I installed Norton.
Dhs. You are very wise. Perhaps, you would like to experiment some Third Party VPNs. There are Third Party VPNs that offer a 7 day free trail period.
I have disabled all Microsoft services. No VPN
I have this problem on a PC the same as Middletown0211 (Dell Intel i5 7200, Windows 10). I also have an Android phone that is unaffected.
44/18 Mb/s drops to 0.25/0.08 Mb/s.
Also the VPN switches itself off randomly (which is just as well at these speeds).
I would agree they have some work to do. Today I was testing my connections via pc against my Android device. Selecting the same regions and making sure they were connecting to the same server. I was getting similar results on both devices. I'm still doing my testing step-by-step to see when, or if, it fails the same as before. Perhaps that data may help narrow this down.
Thanks for everyone's input on this VPN problem, its obviously something they will sort out.
Try another VPN, I have Office 365 and it is working great with a third party VPN. I was surprised to hear that you had an issue. Get a VPN provider with a free trial period. Norton VPN is a poor product, I know for a fact because I have used a number of VPN providers and Norton VPN is the worst.
I'm going to reinstall Windows and try again. Even though the VPN was slower, it did work. As it stands now, I cannot access the web if VPN is enabled. I want to test Norton's VPN without installing any of the Windows updates. Then working up from there. It's really bothering me that the minimal changes I made completely crippled the VPN and I want to know what is was. I've used Norton products for years and never had this much trouble with a feature.
Just bought the 360 standard package today and found issues with the vpn speed. Ran two speed tests, Ookla and Google, you can find the results attached here.
Google speed test- 24.4 up/21 down Mbps (VPN off)
0.51 up/0.49 down Mbps (VPN on)
Ookla speed test- 19.49 up/23.89 down Mbps (VPN off)
1.62 up/7.92 down Mbps (VPN on)
I had a third party VPN (IPVanish). While it was faster than Norton by about 50 MBPS, I could not work with my Office 365 and OneDrive. Without that option, my home based business could not operate. While the concept of VPN is sound, apparently the technology is not ready, unless you want to go back to Internet speeds of 10 years ago.
Try a third party VPN provider and you would see the difference in performance. Norton VPN is not a good product.
I believe I spoke to soon about the improvement in speed. I only made 1 change in the system making firefox my default web browser. I tried using Edge to access speedtest.net and it wouldn't load. Tried other websites and got the same results. Same thing happened with firefox. Turn off VPN and all was good again. I have other things to do before I play with this some more. when I do get back to this I will do what I did before and start with a clean install of windows, unless anyone has any objections.
I tried that, but made no difference