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Ookla speedtest bypassing Instant Guard VPN ???

felicem
Level 7
Hello Community,

Wondering if any of you have seen this too.

I have enabled Instant Guard VPN on my GT-AX11000. My ISP plan is 60/10 Mbps. Having said that I do not expect Ookla speedtest on my android phone (Samsung Galaxy) to exceed this allowed bandwidth when connected to a higher speed network.

When I connect to a friend's higher speed WiFi network (400Mbps plan) and connect to my home router via Instant Guard app, the speedtest is actually showing the speed on my friend's network (i.e. 406Mbps download, 53.9 Mbps upload). It looks like the Ookla speedtest app is somehow bypassing the Instant Guard VPN ! When I use another speed test app (e.g. Fing) I can see more realistic results (10.3 Mbps download, 5.5 Mbps upload) which is a clear indication I am actually going through my home VPN setup with Instant Guard.

If Ookla speedtest can bypass Instant Guard VPN somehow isn't this a huge flaw in the instant guard android app / apk ? Let me know what you guys think :).

Best regards,
Felice
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6 REPLIES 6

RedSector73
Level 12
felicem wrote:
I have enabled Instant Guard VPN on my GT-AX11000. My ISP plan is 60/10 Mbps. Having said that I do not expect Ookla speedtest on my android phone (Samsung Galaxy) to exceed this allowed bandwidth when connected to a higher speed network.

When I connect to a friend's higher speed WiFi network (400Mbps plan) and connect to my home router via Instant Guard app, the speedtest is actually showing the speed on my friend's network (i.e. 406Mbps download, 53.9 Mbps upload).



How can use Instant Guard app on your home router ?

Hi,

As I said I enabled Instant Guard VPN service on my home router.

I went to my friend's place and launched the Instant Guard android application on my smartphone which established a VPN connection to my home router.

When I ran the speedtest from my friend's place it showed the speed of his internet connection, and not the internet speed from my ISP at my router. To me it seems like Ookla speedtest application on my smartphone managed to bypass the Instant Guard VPN connection.

I hope it's more clear now. I guess I should contact the Instant Guard android application team ?

/Felice

felicem wrote:
I went to my friend's place and launched the Instant Guard android application on my smartphone which established a VPN connection to my home router.


Yeah that's clearer now, I'm fairly sure that, you don't understand how this works.
The ap on your smartphone establishes a connection using his internet to your VPN, not via using your router. Go turn your router off and try with friends connection, I bet it works just fine.

Also just for the record, what you did in your first post is not leak test.

Hope you find this helpful.

Sorry mister, but I'm fairly sure I know how it's supposed to work :). It must be my bad that I have not been able to clearly convey what the issue is here.

When I launch the instant guard VPN app on my smartphone, I expect to establish a secure VPN connection to the Instant Guard service that is enabled and running on my GT-AX11000 router.

Once my VPN is established I expect all data/traffic from my smartphone to use my home router network, and not the visited network. Based on speedtest I am seeing there is a clear leak happening when using Ookla speedtest. The Instant Guard android app dev team needs to look at this.

When I launch a speedtest from Fing android app I do not observe this leak.

xeromist
Moderator
My guess is Ookla is doing something different with the connection in order to reduce overhead. I think the network stack, at least as presented at the user layer, is complicated on Android. I seem to remember having issues when trying to use some network related tools without root. By all means, if you can reach the app team do so. I just wonder if this is something that might be difficult to fix.

I gather Fing is way faster on your friend's network with Instant Guard off? Just a sanity check.
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Hi Xeromist,

Yes absolutely, Fing app reports higher speed on my friend's network when disconnecting Instant Guard.

Thanks,
Felice