Infinity and slow NordVPN over Wifi

[DawkinsDog]

I signed up to NordVPN and while the speed over a wired connection from my BT Smart Hub to my tower is pretty good, I get 50mb+ compared to 70mb+ without it enabled, I'm having real problems obtaining decent speeds over wifi to my laptop. The laptop will get 70mb+ without the VPN but struggles to hit 20mb with it, often reaching around 5mb, regardless the server I connect to. 

I've tried disabling the firewall and antivirus, I've turned off NordVPN's CyberSEC blocker, I've tried setting it to TCP and UDP. I've also gone through the suggested help on the NordVPN site, such as flushing the DNS cache etc via Command Prompt. Nothing helps.

I've nothing running in the background using the connection (it would presumably impact the tests without the VPN if there were) and there's nothing else utilising the wifi network when I run tests. 

Running NordVPN on my Android phone and tablet doesn't present any problems over wifi, speed tests are pretty good, so this seems to be specific to my laptop.

Laptop specs; HP Stream Dual Core Celeron 1.6ghz, 4GB ram, Windows 10 64Bit, all up-to-date with the latest drivers that HP supply. I know it's not powerful but my tower is about ten years old and 32bit, that manages!

If anybody has any suggestions as to what I can try I'd be grateful.

[lee4]

hi i wonder if you can help me i have the same Nord Vpn but it wont connect is there any settings you have to change? many thanks

[DawkinsDog]

I certainly didn't have to change any, no, I just installed the NordVPN app and signed in.

Have you tried the Chrome or Firefox extensions? These work independently of the main system wide app. See if you can install and log in successfully on those, it would at least rule out an issue with the account.

I'm in the process of dealing with NordVPN's customer support which, to their credit, seems pretty good so far. When and if they manage to solve my wifi speed issues I'll post what was necessary here, maybe something in that will help. Sorry I can't be of more assistance myself.

[DawkinsDog]

Just a quick update in case others are having the same problem.
It would appear the issue could be the CPU in my laptop, a dual core 1.6ghz Celeron is simply not powerful enough for the OpenVPN system that NordVPN use.

If I go into Task Manager and bump up the OpenVPN Daemon to 'High Priority' I find download speeds increase dramatically, which would seem to confirm it's my hardware at fault.

If nothing else I guess it's an excuse to buy a better laptop lol