nightmare with vpn connection

[ellagarland]

We have vodafone broadband at home with the standard hub. Am having a nightmare when connecting to the work vpn. Speeds drop from 70 to about 15 - 4 when wired or wifi. 

Vodafone advised to plug into the mastersocket/test socket then we get no connection at all. The engineer confirmed that everything ok so might be problem with router. I asked vodafone to send a new router but because the engineer hasn't put notes on the system I can't do anything.

Spent hours talking to vodafone and just want to end the contract but we are only 2 months in. 

What can we do to make the internet work? Is there a router we can purchase?

[Cynric]

@ellagarland  Which VPN is it? Have you any error messages or logs?

I've used Microsoft's Direct Access without problems, but last week there was someone using another service having a problem. So it may be a setting, or the VPN service, or Vodafone.

[Jayach]

If you get no connection when connected to the test socket, there's something very wrong.

Before making any suggestions, you need to resolve that.

It really can't be a problem with the router.

[ellagarland]

I've told vodafone that we get no connection when connected to the test socket but the engineer doesn't test the router and the test socket works for fine for him. 

[Jayach]

If you have had an Openreach engineer, and they have confirmed the test socket works, and your Vodafone router works it MUST work in the test socket, unless you are doing something wrong. Where do you normally have the Vodafone router when it is working?

But I have to say this is all a "bit of a red herring".

To get to your actual problem, you say the works VPN doesn't work (or at least not very well) but do you have any other networking problems? You say your speed is 70Mbs without the VPN so you appear to have a reasonably good connection.

[Cynric]

And we still do not know which VPN provider, so we could possibly advise if it is one we are familiar with.

[CrimsonLiar]

One thing to remember is that using a VPN takes vastly more processing power than just a regular internet connection, and different machines can have vastly different hardware assist features.