I'm connecting to my work VPN and it's making everything drag painfully slow. Emails take forever to open, shared files time out, and video calls freeze all the time. Meanwhile, IT is adamant that it's my home internet causing the problem. I can stream 4K video without any buffering and my speed tests show I'm getting 500Mbps down with low ping. I'm using Windows 11 on a work laptop with Cisco AnyConnect for the VPN, and while it connects without issues, the performance is truly unusable. When I disconnect from the VPN, everything works perfectly fine. Is this typical for corporate VPNs? What can I ask IT to look into because they seem to think this level of performance is okay and that I should just cope with it.
5 Answers
You might want to ask IT about the split tunneling settings. Cisco AnyConnect can sometimes route all your traffic through the corporate network unnecessarily, which can slow things down significantly.
Try running a traceroute while connected to the VPN. This will help you see where your packets are going. If everything is rerouting back to the corporate data center before hitting the internet, that’s likely where the slowdown is happening.
It’s pretty common for corporate VPNs to have speed issues, but not this bad. Have you done any speed tests while connected to the VPN? If IT insists everything's fine, see if you can get a comparison with how other remote users are faring. Either everyone’s struggling, or there’s something unique going on with your setup.
There’s a known issue with Cisco or similar corporate VPNs on Windows when using Wi-Fi. If you can, try to connect via Ethernet instead and restart your system. This might significantly improve your connection. You could also ask IT about MTU settings to check if those are causing fragmentation.
Check your internet upload speed on Speedtest. A really low upload can hurt your VPN performance even if your download is great. My download's around 400Mbps, but I have only 10Mbps upload and it slows AnyConnect down a lot. Also, ask if your IT department can provide a hardware VPN router; they work way better!
Yeah, it's frustrating when home internet is optimized for downloads but the upload is lacking. I’m lucky if I get 50 on upload.
Mine fluctuates between 60-80 Mbps on upload.
Yeah, a lot of companies are hesitant about split tunneling because it can allow other external connections to slip through.