Why is torrent transfer speed reduced when using VPN?

Question

I have been living in a country where recently access to Twitter and a week later, YouTube has been prevented by the command of the government.

There are ways to circumvent it but they are often web-based solutions which do not encrypt or secure Steam connection, torrent traffic etc.

I tried Spotflux VPN solution, however, when Spotflux is enabled, the torrent download speed is dramatically reduced. Once I disabled the app, I receive the expected result. (normal traffic)

• My first question is: Why does the download rate go so low once I activate VPN?

• Secondly, what if torrent traffic as well gets blocked by the command of the government like that happened to YouTube and Twitter? (what am I supposed to do to secure and avoid prohibitions)

Solution

When you connected to the internet through the gateway provided by your VPN provider, then you share the internet connection of that gateway with all other customers of that provider. That's why it's so slow.

Blocking Torrent traffic is a lot harder than blocking a single website. To block a website, they simply block all communication with a certain set of IP addresses. This would not work for Torrent traffic, as it is peer-to-peer.

Comments

[Len]

Well, this sounds clear. However, not quite. What ways may i follow once even Torrent traffic gets blocked?

[Len]

Thanks for the comprehensive information. However, i had an issue while running HotSpotShield Client during bittorrent downloads. Once its off, i could be able to receive the desired transfer speed. (All port forwarding has been done btw) However, when i activate HSS, the speed dramatically fell down. What could the reason be for this?