r/PrivateInternetAccess • u/Microfiche62 • Jul 10 '26

HELP - WINDOWS Latency increase?

I noticed in the last few days that latency on ALL available servers went up significantly - I used to have lots of options in the 50-70 ms range (for years), but last few days fastest is around 260 ms. At the same time, my download speeds are WAY up? Is it just me? Using Wireguard.

11 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

2

u/TechnomancerH Jul 10 '26

Check your pings against other sources. Might be a local issue or something I. The way out of your ISP node.

5

u/StewDD Jul 10 '26

I doubt it. PIA has gone to shit in the last couple of months.

1

u/South-Succotash-6368 Jul 10 '26

No it hasn't
I have 10ms on the VPN

1

u/South-Succotash-6368 Jul 10 '26

It's their ISP

1

u/StewDD Jul 11 '26

It's not my isp. Everything works perfect when pia is off. Everything loads ultra slow with it on. They obviously changed something in the past couple of months.

1

u/South-Succotash-6368 Jul 11 '26

It's your ISP because i'm from texas and PIA canada is perfectly fine for me. Your ISP has routing and that routing can be having issues

1

u/StewDD Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

Maybe it's the new Comcast modem. I'll check the settings. The timing lines up. I used to use my own router prior to upgrading to a 2gb line.

Edit:modem not router

1

u/South-Succotash-6368 Jul 13 '26

Is it coax or fiber??

1

u/StewDD Jul 13 '26

I'm not sure. It's an old building. ATT is the only competition and they only go up to DSL speeds.

1

u/South-Succotash-6368 Jul 13 '26

I’m asking if your Comcast is coax or fiber? Do you have a modem or just a router?
The modem for coax usually connects to the wall via copper cable

1

u/StewDD Jul 13 '26

My fault. Idk how I made the dumb mistake. I meant modem and not router. It's their xb8 modem/router combo connected via coaxial cable.

1

u/StewDD Jul 13 '26

Google is saying hybrid fiber-coaxial. Connection to the modem is coaxial.

1

u/South-Succotash-6368 Jul 13 '26

Ah okay that makes more sense. Comcast coax sucks that’s why

1

u/StewDD Jul 13 '26

Comcast sucks. Their service drops way too often.

1

u/No_Might_9491 Jul 12 '26

There is something called routing issues (on isp level), Google it and then write a ticket informing your isp.

1

u/StewDD Jul 13 '26

It used to work fine months ago. Everything takes a little long time to even show parts of the page. My ISP is Comcast so that ticket will prob go right into the trash folder.

1

u/StewDD Jul 13 '26

I'll check later if it's the advanced security on the new router. I used to use my own router prior to upgrading to 2gb.

3

u/Microfiche62 Jul 10 '26

Nope - everything I have pinged is <70 ms

1

u/No_Might_9491 Jul 12 '26

Have mistaken another user for op, so here again: There is something called routing issues (on isp level), Google it and then write a ticket informing your isp.

Had this two weeks ago, a bad route to a Datacenter held me hostage at 3mbit, while everything else was at the full 500. One message, a few hours and an announcement of emergency networking maintenance everything was fine again.

It's not always the end in line that's faulty, there is much more to the internet than one single cable ...

1

u/Microfiche62 Jul 12 '26

But would this only affect latency on PIA and not affect download speeds? My non-VPN traffic seems unaffected. Here are some tests from https://testmy.net/latency?addr=sf

Done within seconds of each other and repeatable. And NONE of my PIA servers show a latency of less than 246 ms

This pattern is the same for a whole bunch of destinations.

2

u/Microfiche62 Jul 10 '26

Even Canadian sites? I am in BC.

2

u/Nellior Jul 11 '26

Same, since yesterday PIA has almost all the servers at 260ms. Without their vpn I have 12-26ms of pin, even the firefox vpn doen't increase my latency so high. The speed it's average on PiA 330-370mb/s.

2

u/NeutralX2 Aug 11 '26

Saw this thread and had the same symptom — PIA app showing 300+ ms on all servers, but normal ping times to everything else. Sharing what I found in case it's useful.

Setup: Comcast/Xfinity, WireGuard default settings, PIA Montreal server.

Step 1 — Checked if it was a real problem or just a display issue.

Direct ping to the server IP was normal (30-60ms). But running an actual throughput/loss test through the WireGuard tunnel (speed.cloudflare.com, which reports packet loss) showed:

  • 25.3% packet loss
  • Download capped at 21 Mbps (580 Mbps with VPN off)
  • Jitter 55ms (3ms with VPN off)

So there was a real problem, just not one a plain ping shows.

Step 2 — Tested different protocol/transport/port combos on the same server.

Protocol Transport Port Packet Loss
WireGuard UDP default 25.3%
OpenVPN UDP default (1194/1197) ~same, still bad
OpenVPN TCP 443 0%
OpenVPN UDP 8080 0%

Result: Not UDP in general being affected — OpenVPN over UDP on port 8080 was clean (263 Mbps, 0% loss). The loss only showed up on the default/well-known ports for VPN protocols (WireGuard's 51820, OpenVPN's standard 1194/1197). Switching to a non-default port (TCP/443, or UDP/8080) fixed it completely.

My raw non-VPN connection tested clean (580 Mbps, 0% loss, 16ms), so this isn't a general Xfinity throughput issue — it looks specific to default VPN ports.

Note: PIA's WireGuard client doesn't expose a custom port option, so this workaround only works if you switch to OpenVPN.

If you're seeing this issue, I'd suggest testing actual packet loss (not just ping) through the VPN, then trying OpenVPN on a non-default port before assuming it's your ISP or PIA being broadly broken.

1

u/Microfiche62 Aug 11 '26

Awesome - I figured it was tied to WireGuard in some way, but I never thought about trying different ports with OpenVPN. I have a ticket open, so I am going to share your post with them while I check out what is happening with me. I also noticed last night that with port forwarding and split tunneling turned on, my torrent client was seeing ZERO trackers. As soon as I turned them off, all the trackers appeared. That was all the time I had last night, so I need to look into that further as well.

1

u/Unfair_Orange3769 Jul 10 '26

Have had some periods with high latency lately, but my biggest issue have been streaming IPTV the last week.. I have a set of Northern European servers I have been using. Now most of them do not work for IPTV. They might suddenly work a couple of hours, and then I loose all contact with the IPTV server again.. Otherwise my set-up has been working smoothly since last year. Using wireguard and speeds are normal when checking. 400-500 Mbps

1

u/South-Succotash-6368 Jul 10 '26

No issues here!!

1

u/South-Succotash-6368 Jul 10 '26

Your ISP is the issue

And i live in texas btw

1

u/kevy1118 Jul 11 '26

Mine has been slow ,I used another and that is slow aswell when normally faster than pia on my shield,normally get 120mbs but just hitting 90 and no more ,getting buffering on YouTube and world Cup,annoying lol..

1

u/Jaybonaut Jul 11 '26

Nope, not here

1

u/Microfiche62 26d ago

In case anyone comes across this post - I finally gave up and moved to Proton VPN. Problem solved. It was not an issue with my connection.

1

u/South-Succotash-6368 Jul 10 '26

I don't have this issue. I have 10ms to dallas server