Tailscale unusually slow

1

Hi all strange issue.

I have two VPS machines, one is in Auckland, the other in Sydney.
My aim is to use the Auckland VPS as an exit node for the Sydney VPS, but was shocked to see how slow the speeds are, as only 2500km separate NZ, and Aus, and there is a direct Fiber link. How can I improve the speeds. Here is a photo that compares the speedtest results. The one results with the higher speed is Auckland, where as the slow speed is Auckland.

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image1351×461 44 KB

here’s my statistics.

ubuntu@nz-pvr:~$ tailscale status
100.126.78.123 nz-pvr paul.southafrican92@ linux -
100.82.170.90 breathe-server paul.southafrican92@ windows -
100.116.223.29 jhb-tailscale-vpn paul.southafrican92@ linux idle; offers exit node
100.109.76.19 new-uk-pvr paul.southafrican92@ linux offline
100.86.200.27 nz paul.southafrican92@ linux active; exit node; direct 49.50.249.92:41641, tx 56078696 rx 152811256
100.121.70.52 paul-halftop paul.southafrican92@ windows idle; offers exit node; offline
100.103.129.16 paul-toshibalaptop paul.southafrican92@ windows active; relay “sao”, tx 712656 rx 550172
100.73.162.87 radiovpn paul.southafrican92@ linux idle; offers exit node

Hopefully someone can please shed some light on this.

Thanks

2

I’m not sure which machine is which in your tailscale status output, but are you sure you’re getting a direct Tailscale connection and not through a relay?

Also, are you using the same version of speedtest-cli on each machine? I ran into a bug a long time ago where the repository version on Debian (dont quote me on that) would show something like 4.xx Mbps on some metrics every time, even though it should have been 10x higher. The fix was to manually install the latest version. I can’t find the page that led me to that issue, but worth checking out at least. Maybe give the Ookla version a shot. I suggest manual install and not repository.