so, this made me curious about the apparent “instant” install i got with VPN, and… I was wrong.
turns out apt remove tailscale && apt install tailscale just installed the cached local deb file, and i missed that (sry, was multitasking!).
after cleaning the cache and retrying, I get the same ~20-40 kbps. so VPN didn’t help.
but then, I’m 9000 miles from SF, and avg ping time to server is 600ms (with huge variations - going from 200-1000ms, (wonder why?)), so I guess laws of physics apply.