Forum Discussion
VPN issues
All devices and home network are good. Signal strength is 2 bars (weak, but functional). Spouse needs to set up VPN to work from home, but even IT from the office could not get VPN to work via T-Mob...
VPN: ProtonVPN & using the desktop app. Internet: T-Mobile Home Internet Gateway: Fast 5688W
So I just spent the last few hours troubleshooting this problem, and was able to solve the problem.
Before I replied on this post I spent an hour or so of searching forums and protons site, and followed the recommendation of trying each protocol (within Protons Desktop App, has to be a paid account to make a custom profile and set which protocol to use) to determine if one was faster then the other (Smart, Wireguard, OpenVPN(TCP), OpenVPN(UDP)
Nothing made a difference. I could connect to some sites like Proton.me but 90% of most sites timed out including those that I use to help diagnose the network like "https://ipleak.net".
"https://packetlosstest.com/" y "https://www.speedtest.net/" would connect to the site but always fail when testing the speed or packet loss.
I started by resetting the default settings and clearing the cache/cookies in Brave, Opera & Edge.Still all the browsers had the same problem & timed out connecting to most sites.
I made sure each browser and ProtonVPN had firewall exceptions, before completely shutting off my firewall and windows defender.
Tried resetting the ip and flushing the dns from Windows Command Console before completely resetting my network and restarting the computer.
I still had the same problem, so I started researching my isp, T-Mobile Home Internet. I noticed in a few posts that T-Mobile doesn't fully support Ipv6, so I went to my network adapter settings and turned Ipv6 off. Then I turned ProtonVPN's protocol to OpenVPN(TCP).
This was the first time I was able to fully connect everywhere with decent speeds.
Out of curiousity I then went and turned Ipv6 back on, Everything continued to work fine.
So I am not sure why when I tried OpenVPN(TCP) in the very beginning it didn't work, why it works now after toggling Ipv6 on and off. Maybe because I did a network reset then set ProtonVPN to OpenVPN(TCP)? Im not sure. Its working now though.
I also saw in the same forum numerous people were having good luck with reducing their MTU to increase their speeds. "https://homenetworkgeek.com/mtu-size/#How_to_Access_Command_Prompt_in_Windows"
"https://amithkumarg.medium.com/resolved-t-mobile-home-internet-vpn-issue-2f5ca594c23e" (If you can't read the article because your not a member goto bing, search for 'resolved-t-mobile-home-internet-vpn-issue-2f5ca594c23e' and when you find the result goto the cached version of it. Then while veiwing the cached version disable all scripts for the page and reload. You should have the full article)
My speeds before I changed the MTU were ping-76 down-16.03 up-3.66
Testing from the same location afterwords ping-60 down-24.76 up-5.19
I only tested it briefly but it did seem to make a difference
I would have provided a much simpler reply if I had been able to pinpoint what exactly fixed my problems. So I figured it was best I just wrote everything down :))
