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Why your speed might be lower than expected

Slow on Throughwire? A short checklist to find the real bottleneck (your carrier, your local network, the time of day or another VPN) before contacting us.

Throughwire delivers between 100 and 500 Mbps on most China connections. If you're seeing less, the bottleneck is almost always one of these.

1. Your local carrier

The single biggest factor. Throughwire is optimized for China Telecom and works well on China Mobile. China Unicom peers poorly with Japan, especially in the evening, and Unicom users routinely see slower speeds.

If you can, test from a hotspot on a different carrier. If your phone on Mobile is fast and your Unicom home line is slow, that's the answer.

2. Your local network

Run a Wi-Fi speed test directly to the router, without the VPN connected. If that's already slow, the issue is between your device and the router.

  • The 2.4 GHz band is congested in dense apartment buildings; switch to 5 GHz where you can.
  • A wired Ethernet connection always outperforms Wi-Fi for sustained transfers.
  • Old or cheap routers cap below 100 Mbps regardless of the line.

3. Time of day

Peak evening hours hit every international link out of China. The same route that runs 300 Mbps at noon may run 80 Mbps at 9pm. That's upstream congestion, not the tunnel itself.

4. Another VPN is also running

Two VPNs route through each other and both slow down. Make sure no other VPN profile is active on the device.

What's not the problem

tracert / traceroute doesn't go through the VPN. It uses ICMP packets that take the raw internet path, so your traceroute shows the route as if Throughwire weren't connected, even when it is. To verify the tunnel is working, visit whatismyip.com in a browser; you should see an Osaka IP. For real ping, use a browser-based tool like ping.pe.

Still slow?

Send us a contact form note with:

  • The city you're in
  • Your carrier (Telecom / Mobile / Unicom)
  • A speed test from speedtest.net or fast.com
  • The specific apps or sites that feel slow

We'll look at your actual route and respond within a business day.