Internet speed drops below 1 Mbps when connecting via Pulse

[smamidi]

 Using 

Tunnel Type: VPN

VPN Type: ESP

The internet speed is 50+ mbps when not connected to Pluse. Infact, even if I pause the VPN, the speed picks up to 50+ mbps from less than 1 mbps. Behavior is the same via WiFi and LAN. Tried restarting laptop, modem and router as well.

Using Windows 7 professional OS. 

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

[mspiers]

You will not achieve the speed you have with the raw connection as you are encrypting and tunnelling traffic via Pulse to a VPN gateway.    The speed you can achieve will depend on many factors such as how many other users are connected to the same gateway and the overall bandwidth in use by all the users on the gateway, it is also possible for the administrator to use badwidth restrictions on the connection.   It would be best to raise the performance issue with the gateway administrator and they can review if you are achieving much less throughput than other users or not.   If there does seem to be an issue with your connection speed then they can open a Support case to help troubleshoot why you are achieving less throughput than other users.

[tomasso79]

I also do experience a similar issue with my customer.
However, when using ESP connection it is way worse, than SSL. 

The issue does not occur on all of the devices, even though they have the exact same configuration. Still, plenty of users are affected and so far we could not identify what causes these devices to cause issues.

It is present on all networks - the user's home network as well as an external network that was tested at the office.

The bandwidth of one of the networks was 80 MBit/s 

Pulse Secure ESP connection was 0,4 MBit/s - impossible to work

Pulse Secure SSL connection was around 10 MBit/s - still way too slow considering the maximum bandwidth.

Our Pulse Secure VPN Admins claim the issue has to be somewhere on the client side, referring to the error 303 found in the Pulse Secure logs. This error message doesn't tell much - according to the documentation it is:

303 error The connection encountered an error: Peer address: . A connection encountered an error. - which is really not helpful.

The machines affected are running Windows 7 and some also Windows 10.

We have performed a full cleanup of previous URA software on the affected pc's - previously it was Network Connect, now it is Pulse Secure - deleted all the Juniper and Pulse Secure software on the client with no results.

Is somebody to advise us what to look for, which might be causing this performance degradation?

Thanks in advance for providing any information that you might find useful in this context, guys.

[rafa]

Same problem here.

¿Any solution or clue?

Thanks Rafa

[[email protected]]

Review this KB article:

KB43833 - Slow download speeds over Wifi after installing Pulse Desktop client on Windows 10 Redstone 3 and up https://kb.pulsesecure.net/articles/Pulse_Secure_Article/KB43833.

[phoete]

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[email protected] wrote:

Review this KB article:

KB43833 - Slow download speeds over Wifi after installing Pulse Desktop client on Windows 10 Redstone 3 and up https://kb.pulsesecure.net/articles/Pulse_Secure_Article/KB43833.

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This one worked well and is the best answer to the above question. My WiFi connection speed is now at a satisfactory ~2Mbps–~7Mbps.

Based on Ray's response in this article https://community.pulsesecure.net/t5/Pulse-Connect-Secure/What-does-quot-Juniper-Network-Service-quo..., Juniper Network Service is needed when "Pulse is first installed to allow communication between Pulse drivers and drivers on the PC." The JNS is no longer needed after that and should not cause any negative impact on work stations "as long as they are connecting to Pulse Connect Secure devices."

[LiftBridge]

Same issue except speeds change depend on your endpoint.  When testing the tunnel through the internet I get 10Mbs but transfering lage files to any internal server in our data center, speeds drop as low as 60Kbs and then bounce between 60Kbs and 800Kbs.

I only ask is that many our complaining about slow VPN and our IT department keeps saying it's our local WIFI are the issue.  Many of us don't follow the logic that we can have 10Mbs internet service through the VPN tunnel but then speeds dropping 80% with internal datacenter endpoints. 

So before I push internal IT push buttons, is there any possible setting on Pulse VPN that could cause this type of issue?    

[flipPipe]

Hi,

As admin of several PSAs, I also had many complains from my users.

After we apply method #1 of KB43833 the complains drooped significatly.

Excluding bad capacity management on VPN servers or bad management in general, at client side there also many other places to search for issues:

• CPU consumption - encryption is computationaly heavy, so if your CPU is already overloaded, VPN traffic will drop
• Buggy Wifi Drivers - Not always the lattest wifi drivers is the best option

Then, you also need to check, if your traffic will use web proxy or not.

If you are using an ISP, remember they also apply network traffic engineering (or traffic shapping if you like).

At this moment, in my home, I get this download (upload) speeds using Wifi:

WithOut VPN: 42Mbps (10Mbps)

With VPN: 39Mbps (8Mbps)

In Linux, using ESP, via speedtest.net servers.

Is this software perfect: no.

I just want to raise awareness about other places there the problems can arise.

In the end I just wish that PS:

• remove legacy stuff for SRX from PDC. If some clients need it, have a special version for them, or add a switch to install legacy stuff if needed, and not to everybody;
• have some way to test throughput against VPN server with and without tunnel