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Tips on speeding up remote connection to personal server? (pawb.social)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by Inkstainthebat@pawb.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I have a personal server I connect to through Tailscale whenever I'm not home, however I've found that whenever I'm connecting remotely connection speed drops drastically from 100MB/s to <3MB/s.

I expect there to be some speed loss when connecting over the internet compared to locally, but 3MB/s doesn't make any sense especially considering that according to a python script I found that uses speedtest.net to test internet speed through a terminal, it reported 109Mbit/s download and and 76Mbit/s upload (~13MB/s; 9MB/s), which aren't amazing but leagues beyond 2MB/s. Moreover I also did a quick test with a friend of mine briefly using port-forwarding and they reported the same speeds, which tells me it isn't Tailscale slowing me down.

Is this just what happens when you connect over the internet? What trickery is afoot to allow me to download things from the interwebz using that sweet full 109Mbit/s bandwidth?

EDIT: tailscale status says the connection is direct

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[-] dieTasse@feddit.org 2 points 3 months ago

Are you using any other networking sw?

[-] Inkstainthebat@pawb.social 1 points 3 months ago

none that I'm aware of

[-] dieTasse@feddit.org 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Do you use tailscale as an exit node? What device are you using to access the home network when you are away? What are your speeds on that device without tailscale (but still away)?

Or did you mean that the speed drop happens for the server, not for the connected device? So when you are connected through tailscale the server would be unable to e.g. download anything fast?

[-] Inkstainthebat@pawb.social 1 points 1 month ago

Sorry, your reply fell through the cracks. I connect directly to my personal server through Tailscale, the speeds are listed in the post itself (the test was done by connecting to the server via SSH and running the script directly on it) and they're accurate to the actual speed as it appears from the qbittorrent webui. I usually connect through my desktop but the speeds on it are still far superior to what connecting to my server through Tailscale returns. However, you did just make me notice my normal upload speed is surprisingly low, which may be the culprit. I'll run more tests

this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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