How do I set up a fast VPN using my SA ISP?

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PaulB_

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Hi all.

Currently on holiday in New Zealand, and sometimes need access to a SA ISP, as certain things either require the use of SA IP, or Facebook doesn't load all my SA groups, as it thinks I currently reside in NZ, and I still assist SA IT clients, and I need Facebook to load all my SA groups, or else I don't get work.


The quality of a SA VPNs leave a lot to be desired, however I have a 100/10 fiber connection in Cape Town, which from the first of next month will be upgraded to a 100/100 line free of charge, which would be perfect for me to run VPN server off my Windows Desktop in Cape Town and I could then connect to it from here, and I would then have a reasonably fast private SA VPN, using my own ISP.

I currently have it set up like that, however things are super slow even though I only have 10mb upload.
Currently running Hamachi between my SA desktop & NZ laptop, and then have privoxy running on my desktop in SA, which gives me access to my Mweb ISP, however my down speed, in NZ is just above 1mb, and upload speed is about 5mb.

Would this be a limitation with Hamachi, or Privoxy, or has it got to do with my slow upload on MWeb site?

How would I be able to set things up, so my down speed here in NZ will be as fast as possible? I make changes to the SA side via Anydesk. To further complicate things, I need to remember the password for the main router in Cape Town, so am currently unable to forward any ports, which is all the more reason why Hamachi is so great as it doesn't require anybody to log in, and forward ports.

I look forward to hearing back.

Thanks
 
Why dont you just use something simple like tunnel bear if you just want Facebook to show your SA groups?
Its free and dead simple to use.
 
PaulB_ said:
Hi all.

Currently on holiday in New Zealand, and sometimes need access to a SA ISP, as certain things either require the use of SA IP, or Facebook doesn't load all my SA groups, as it thinks I currently reside in NZ, and I still assist SA IT clients, and I need Facebook to load all my SA groups, or else I don't get work.


The quality of a SA VPNs leave a lot to be desired, however I have a 100/10 fiber connection in Cape Town, which from the first of next month will be upgraded to a 100/100 line free of charge, which would be perfect for me to run VPN server off my Windows Desktop in Cape Town and I could then connect to it from here, and I would then have a reasonably fast private SA VPN, using my own ISP.

I currently have it set up like that, however things are super slow even though I only have 10mb upload.
Currently running Hamachi between my SA desktop & NZ laptop, and then have privoxy running on my desktop in SA, which gives me access to my Mweb ISP, however my down speed, in NZ is just above 1mb, and upload speed is about 5mb.

Would this be a limitation with Hamachi, or Privoxy, or has it got to do with my slow upload on MWeb site?

How would I be able to set things up, so my down speed here in NZ will be as fast as possible? I make changes to the SA side via Anydesk. To further complicate things, I need to remember the password for the main router in Cape Town, so am currently unable to forward any ports, which is all the more reason why Hamachi is so great as it doesn't require anybody to log in, and forward ports.

I look forward to hearing back.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Wireguard is probably the quickest.

If you want super easy you can use windscribe custom plan which is $2 or something like that for SA as the location which supports Wireguard and they have servers on Afrihost, Xneelo and Psychz networks.
 
You could try Zerotier which is a wireguard based Mesh VPN

Sign up for free (up to 50 nodes), create an network and install the client on your computers (nodes)

I think you could configure the desktop in bridging mode to connect your NZ Laptop to your home network.
 
Success (Well Kind of)

I decided not to use Zerotier, or even Hamachi, as my main gateway router in Cape Town is fairly high end. (TP-Link Archer V400), I actually salvaged it from work when they replaced ADSL for fiber, and it just sat in storage, and that router supports setting up a VPN Server, so I can connect directly into the router.

The only problem now is the speed of the internet is a bit on the slow side. I wasn't expecting rocket fast fiber speeds as I would had I been in Cape Town, but I was certain they could be a little bit faster.

11815494644.png


Here is my results, run from my laptop in Auckland connected to the PPTP VPN I set up directly to the router, how could I make the speed a little faster? I have 100mb upload now, so things should be a little faster.

Thanks
 
What connection are you using in NZ and what is the speed of that connection?
Doubt you have a 1:1 100Mb connection to South Africa...
What speed do you get in a speedtest if you select SA speedtest servers without the VPN while in NZ?

Edit: When I do a speedtest from Cape town selecting a Auckland server I get a whopping 2.4Mb/s download and 3 Mb/s upload, and that's over a 1Gb business line...
 
Last edited:
We currently have a 100/20 here. This was a speedtest done to Auckland.
11827043750.png
Speedtest from NZ to SA without the VPN is basically the same as with the VPN connected. Same PING, and same speed.

11827053866.png


VPN Results
11827078492.png
 
Multitude of possible issues,including isps throttling connections,peering and bandwidth limitations to said peers,latency and routing,line contention

When im working overseas I generally have a machine to RDP to at home to lessen responsiveness issues

If I need speed from a ZA IP I spin up a machine on Azure,to use as proxy or directly
 
11827635165.png



Here is a another test result I did remotely from my desktop in Cape Town, and one can see the speed is similar than when I ran a speed test from NZ to SA. So it can't be MWEB, as when I run a speedtest from NZ, other servers also have the same speed. It can't be our ISP in NZ, as when I run a speedtest from SA, the speed is the same. As PsyWulf suggested, it could very well be a routing thing.
 
PaulB_ said:
11827635165.png



Here is a another test result I did remotely from my desktop in Cape Town, and one can see the speed is similar than when I ran a speed test from NZ to SA. So it can't be MWEB, as when I run a speedtest from NZ, other servers also have the same speed. It can't be our ISP in NZ, as when I run a speedtest from SA, the speed is the same. As PsyWulf suggested, it could very well be a routing thing.
Click to expand...

This is my supersonic LTE to Vodaphone Auckland and I’m based in Durban so I’m not sure what could be giving you such poor results

IMG_6483.jpg
 
Past experience with Australia, business fibre link on seacom @ office in gauteng, hosted nextcloud so it's a private link on 100/100, trying to download a 1gb file was impossible, speed was around 80KBps, ended up uploading that file via RDP onto Google cloud to get full 400mbps speed in melbourne. I have feeling the link between SA and Oceania in general is slow.
 
An update.. On another PC in the house, same network, same ISP, same LAN, same method of connectivity I get a much faster result, whereas my laptop is stuck at 5mb/s. This speed test result, is more or less what I expected.
11852113620.png
 
Sorted it!

I was running a dev version of Windows 11 on my laptop, and found that Windows 11 was the culprit for slowing down the connection.

Once that was sorted the speed of connection to SA increased. One evening a speedtest showed 45mb down.
 
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