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I tested at all of those points as recommended with no conclusive results, so I went ahead and contacted Xfinity to cover all bases. Turns out one of the underground cable lines is corrupted/severely water damaged, but the VPN coincidentally forces traffic over the only 2 channels on the line which happen to be intact.

The entire house download speed has dropped to below 50Mbps without the VPN, but they'll be tearing up the yard and replacing the cable shortly.

Thanks all for the help!

For what it's worth, I went ahead and installed them anyways. I rebooted the router as well for good measure, but don't see any difference in the download speed.

That's the million dollar question haha. That's correct though, there is a modem in front of OPN. I get the full 1200Mbps when connecting a laptop directly to the modem. As soon as I stick OPN in, I get the 90% loss.

Alrighty, I can do that.

WAN: Xfinity → Personal Modem (Arris S33v2) → TPLink 2.5Gb PCIe (TX201)
LAN: 10Gb PCIe (10Gtek X540) → Yuanley 8 Port 2.5Gb switch (10Gb SFP input)
(OPN dashboard shows 2500/10Gbase-T full-duplex uplinks respectively)

No PPoE for WAN, DHCPv4/v6 servers for LAN
Fresh install of OPNSense 24.1 - Suricata/Zenarmor disabled

No VPN for any of the following:

Speedtest (speedtest.net/fast.com average over multiple)
Taken at Modem - 1139Mbps
Wireless - 98Mbps
Wired - 170Mbps

iPerf between 1 wired and 1 wireless device on the network, 987Mbps
iPerf between 2 wired devices on the network, 2.34Gbps

Proton does have the VPN accelerator yes. In this case though, it's really about the router. I have 1200Mbps coming into the router, and 90% of that throughout is disappearing. Using the VPN seems to be a bandaid of sorts, but it's not a viable solution for most of my family.

What I'm really trying to figure out is where 90% of the download speed is going during normal use.

Also I'm sorry I didn't clarify earlier: 1200/40 was referring to 1200 download/40 upload. 100Mbps is absolutely not viable for us as we have 70+ devices on the WiFi, and multiple people streaming classes/meetings/working remotely. The ISP is consistently supplying 1200Mbps into the router, OPN is just eating it somewhere.

Oh my bad! I'm using the standalone VPN client provided by ProtonVPN. I use it on and off my home network completely independently of OPNSense. I have not done any customization to OPNSense at all, and have not set up any VPN client/server through the router.

I think you have it right, but just to clarify: While at home on the network managed by my OPNSense router, on a wired or WiFi connection, the download speed is significantly faster WITH the ProtonVPN connected.

Please feel free to ask any other questions and I can specify further. I'm not really sure what other details would be helpful. Thanks!

P.S. I briefly looked into MTU sizes, but I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. The router is set to the default value of 1500.

Thank you everyone for the fast replies.

I am based in the Roanoke, VA area. I currently using the paid version of ProtonVPN, with servers typically in NYC, Richmond, and Miami and download speeds typically between 1000-1200Mbps. I pay for 1200/40 from XFinity. When taking the test at the modem this is consistently what I get.

When taking the test on a wireless device, with VPN it's typically 440Mbps down/40 up, and the same 120Mbps or so without VPN. On a wired device, it's the full ~1100 with/~120 without. iPerf tests on both wireless/wired devices show no difference with the VPN on/off, and have the full expected bandwidth regardless.

So far I've tried another fresh install of 24.1, changing DNS servers to Cloudflare/google/ISP, enabling/disabling Zenarmor, and various combinations of hardware offloading settings.

I can't think of anything else to try or test but am open to any suggestions.

I don't know much about networking so I apologize in advance if this is a stupid question, but can anyone help me figure out why my download speed is so slow without a VPN? I'm averaging about 120Mbps without, and 1200Mbps with. Fresh install of Opnsense on an Optiplex i5/16gb ram. Thanks in advance!

Here's hopefully an interesting one for all you OPNSense detectives.

I recently set up a fresh install of OPNSense, and after only a few weeks started noticing significant speed slowdowns. I tested the connection at the modem and saw exactly what we are paying for, (the infamous Comcast 1.2Gbps/40Mbps package.) I started taking speed tests on various devices and sites, (fast.com, speedtest.net, and thinkbroadband.com) and got a relatively consistent ~100Mbps down and ~35Mbps, regardless of Wifi/ethernet connection, phone/laptop. This is also consistently the speed I'm getting on game download servers such as Steam/XBox.

However, when I turn on ProtonVPN on any of these devices, (the family VPN subscription) the speeds instantly jump up to the maximum bandwidth of the connection, (about 480Mbps on wireless devices and the full 1.2Gbps on wired.) Running iPerf tests on the LAN connection reveals no change with/without the VPN, e.g. it's the full ~480Mbps/1.2Gbps regardless. The change with/without the VPN is instant.

I have no traffic shaping/QOS/VLANs of any kind that I'm aware of, and am beginning to find the slowdowns quite frustrating, (especially as everyone in the house is complaining of the slow speeds in their day-to-day usage.)

I'm running a fresh install of OPNSense directly on the hardware of an Optiplex 3050, i5-6500, with 16GB of ram. (Completely overkill, I know. This is intended for other future home server applications, and electricity cost is not an issue.) The only things I have installed/modified are setting up a default instance of os-sunvalley/Zenarmor, and the os-realtek drivers for a 10Gbps and 2.5Gpbs Pcie card. I have a 10Gbps switch on the LAN side, and a 2.5Gpbs self-owned modem on the WAN side. For WiFi access I have 3 Deco X60's all hardwired to the switch.

Any help/insight here is much appreciated. Thanks!